One attorney “argues that there is a large body of evidence that farmers intended to grow hemp, beginning with the fact that they testified before legislative committees in favor of legalizing this agricultural practice in Wyoming.”
By Andrew Graham, WyoFile.com
UPDATE: Laramie County District Attorney David Singleton and attorneys for the defendants questioned Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigations special agent John Briggs Thursday during the opening of the preliminary hearing. Laramie County Circuit Court Judge Antoinette Williams will preside over the hearing, which spanned an as of yet unannounced date. – Ed.
Agents from the Wyoming Criminal Investigation Division raided an Albin hemp farm in November, operated by two key people to legalize the harvest in Wyoming, court filings show.
DCI and Laramie County prosecutors are accusing mother and son farmers of growing marijuana with the intent to distribute because the more than 700 pounds of dry plant material seized by the law was tested slightly above the legal limit. THC concentration of 0.3%, according to a DCI affidavit. Marijuana and hemp are derived from the same plant. Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, is the chemical in marijuana that elevates users. Its low presence in hemp prevents the crop from being classified as a drug.
Farmers Deb Palm-Egle and her son Josh Egle could face years, even decades, in prison if convicted.
The Egles intended to grow hemp, and its cultivation was tested below the legal limit before the raid, according to documents filed by their attorney, trial attorney Tom Jubin de Cheyenne.
In the July 6 court filing, Jubin argues that there is a large body of evidence that the farmers intended to grow hemp, starting with the fact that they testified before legislative committees in favor of legalizing this farming practice in Wyoming.
The case is filed for a preliminary hearing tomorrow in the Laramie County Circuit Court. Jubin declined to comment, but his filing indicates he will ask the judge to dismiss the case because his clients did not intend to grow marijuana, which he says should invalidate all charges.
The Legislature legalized the cultivation of industrial hemp in 2017, though it became law without the signature of then Gov. Matt Mead, a sign of his disapproval.
Jubin’s list of expected witnesses includes high-ranking politicians. Wyoming State Treasurer Curt Meier, former state senator, along with House Majority House Leader Eric Barlow and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Dan Kirkbride, all hemp farming advocates who interacted with farmers accused during statutory legislative hearings are listed as potential witnesses. . All three presented testimony that they believe the Egles intended to grow hemp, not marijuana.
Political advocates of hemp have touted it as a way to diversify Wyoming’s fossil fuel-dependent economy and provide a new crop for the state’s farmers.
A photograph of the Egles alongside Gov. Mark Gordon at the March 6, 2019 signing of a follow-up bill that legalizes hemp production and processing is also included in the filing.
Jubin is also arguing that while DCI tests found that the plants contained above the legal limit for THC, their concentration of the psychoactive ingredient was too low to be effective as an illegal intoxicant.
DCI agents subjected the plants to a series of 10 tests, according to the loading documents. In nine of them, the concentration was above 0.3%, according to the cargo documents. The highest test level returned at 0.6% THC.
But for someone looking to get high, smoking these plants would be a disappointment. A review of the recreational marijuana dispensary websites in Fort Collins, Colorado shows that most of the “flowers,” the smokable buds of plants, contain 15% THC or more.
“A hemp crop containing about .3 percent, or even more than one percent, would be completely unmarketable like marijuana,” Jubin argued in his July 6 presentation. Jubin argued that selling such a product “on the illegal black market” could even put the seller at risk of retaliation.
“Selling a plant that represents marijuana could endanger the seller as it does not have significant psychoactive properties, and any buyer would be considered cheated or cheated,” he wrote. Farmers also could not sell the crop in the legal marijuana market, because it did not come from a licensed growing operation, Jubin argued.
Prosecutors, however, are pressing serious charges against the farmers. These include conspiracy to manufacture, deliver, or possess marijuana; possession with intent to deliver marijuana; possession of marijuana; and plant or grow marijuana. All but the last are serious crimes. The conspiracy and possession charges with intent to surrender carry prison terms of zero to 10 years. Possession of a felony of marijuana, over three ounces, carries a prison sentence of zero to five years.
Two other people, Brock and Shannon Dyke, who were present at the farm on the day of the raid, face identical charges. Brock Dyke was a contractor who worked for the Egles, according to Jubin’s presentation.
Laramie County District Attorney Leigh Ann Manlove did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.
Tipster led to ‘bust’
The path to the DCI raid on the farm in quiet Albin, east of Cheyenne, near the Nebraska border, began on September 4, according to prosecution documents. That day, a “trusted source of information” contacted DCI Special Agent J. Briggs and said he was concerned that Palm-Egle was growing marijuana. The source said that he or she “has known PALM-EGLE for some time,” Briggs wrote in his affidavit. The trusted source said they had seen a new addition at the Palm-Egle farm and “believed that the new addition was what was described as a” greenhouse, “” Briggs wrote. The source “also claimed that he / she noticed ‘blue lights coming from the greenhouse.'”
The source also said Palm-Egle, who is 60, spoke in a conversation about marijuana that alleviates the symptoms of his multiple sclerosis.
More than a month after the notice, on October 28, DCI Briggs “attempted to conduct physical surveillance at the residence,” he wrote. He saw car tracks but not people.
On November 1, Briggs returned to the farm with another agent and went to find someone to talk to. They found no one, even after knocking on doors and entering “open barns” to look “around corners in areas that someone might be, with the inability to hear officers announce themselves,” Briggs wrote.
He found no one to talk to, but saw “what appeared to be raw plant-shaped marijuana” hanging in a doorless barn to hide it. Briggs then did some research, according to his affidavit. An official with the Wyoming Department of Agriculture told him that hemp licenses had not yet been issued. Briggs also discovered that Palm-Egle was once the registered agent for a Denver-based marijuana company, but the company no longer held a grow license.
On the morning of November 4, officers executed a search warrant and raided the farm, where they found the Dykes, along with their two children. Jubin describes Brock Dyke as a construction contractor who worked for the Egles.
“My clients are honest small business owners,” said Michael Bennett, a Laramie-based attorney representing the Dykes. Bennett declined to comment further on the case.
When officers entered the barn, they discovered that the plants had been dismantled and the shoots had been placed in “large brown paper bags.”
According to Briggs, Brock Dykes in an interview told the agent that the plants were “clones” of marijuana plants that Josh Egle had brought from a marijuana crop in Colorado.
According to Jubin’s presentation, Dykes told DCI agent Jason Moon during the raid that the crop was hemp. He provided the agent with text messages from the farmers with the results of two previous tests that the farmers had commercial laboratory behavior on the crop. Both tests, as well as a third that is included as evidence in Jubin’s presentation, returned below 0.3% THC. Moon shared those results with other investigative law enforcement officers, Jubin said.
Jubin will argue that the fact that the farmers were testing their crop suggests that they were growing hemp, not pot, he wrote in his presentation. This idea is consistent with what “one of the DCI agents on the scene at the time of the search has said,” Jubin wrote.
“It is very surprising that this matter has gone so far and has reached this point,” Jubin wrote.
Agents took the plants in the barn, “as well as a small amount of high-grade marijuana from inside the residence,” which the Dykes denied ownership. Agents seized 327,600 grams of plants, according to the affidavit. That is approximately 722 pounds.
WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming’s people, places, and policies.
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