Pubdate: Thu, 17 May 2012
Source: Chilliwack Times (CN BC)
Copyright: 2012 Chilliwack Times
Contact:  http://www.chilliwacktimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1357
Author: Tyler Olsen

OBLIVIOUS OR COMPLICIT?

Darryl Ness says he never noticed the smell of marijuana coming from a
10,000-plant operation located on a property he was caretaking

For five and a half months in 2009, Darryl Francis Ness lived in a
Nixon Road farmhouse on the same property that housed the largest,
most sophisticated marijuana grow operation in Chilliwack history.

Beneath a Quonset hut on the property grew more than 10,000 marijuana
plants, which produced a yearly crop that could be sold for between $3
million and $5 million.

It was a massive operation requiring daily maintenance, but last week
Ness told a Supreme Court justice that he was oblivious to what was
going on beneath the Quonset hut.

Ness was charged with production of a controlled substance, and
possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking. At his trial
last Thursday and Friday, Ness told a judge that his move to the
property began with an innocent conversation in the spring of 2009 at
Friendly Mike's pub.

Unable to work following a hernia operation, Ness said he was in dire
financial straights and unable to pay the rent on his Coote Street
home. A regular at Friendly Mike's, Ness was complaining in March
about his dilemma one day when a man approached from another table.

"I didn't really know who he was," Ness told the court. The man came
with a proposition: Ness could live for free at the Nixon Road home,
he was told. All he would have to do was act as caretaker and provide
night-time security.

"He said: 'You don't have to do anything.'"

The site was home to more than a dozen head of cattle along with some
llamas, and Ness said thought he was providing an extra set of eyes.

"To me, it looked like a farm," he told the court.

He said he would see men tending to the livestock and sometimes
working on the property. But he said he thought nothing of it. When
the visitors entered the property, they deactivated the security
system and cameras that monitored the front gate. Ness said entered
the ground floor of the Quonset hut two or three times, but never went
further, he told the court.

Many holes in his story

But Crown counsel Michael LeDressay, didn't buy Ness's story, or his
explanations for the evidence found in the farmhouse.

Police had found keys to the bunker in the house, but Ness said he
never touched them. Mounties had also discovered a notepad that
contained both notations made by Ness for his home-business selling
car parts online, and the names of chemicals and nutrients found in
the bunker. Ness said he hadn't made the notes about the nutrients.

But there were more holes in Ness's story, LeDressay
said.

The crown's expert witness on grow operations, RCMP Cpl. Kurtis
Bosnell, had earlier told the court: "It's too much risk to put
anybody in [the house], without some knowledge of what's happening
there."

So why, LeDressay wondered aloud, would the proprietors of such a
massive undertaking hire an unknown man to keep watch over their
multimillion dollar investment? How could they be sure that their
caretaker wouldn't call the police if he stumbled upon, say, an
underground bunker with 10,000 pot plants?

And why, LeDressay asked, did he not call police when he looked at
that monitor and saw two men clad in black and wearing ski masks
trying to break into his property? Yes, he had been told to not call
police, but didn't this seem like a dangerous situation? Why not dial
9-1-1, even if it meant angering his landlord? LeDressay asked Ness.

"I have no answer for that," said Ness.

Ness's lawyer, James Hogan, did have a response. He said if hiring an
unknown man to look after the property was illogical, as LeDressay
claimed it was, then it was just as unlikely for Ness to take part in
such an enterprise merely to avoid paying rent.

But what about the smell? A child of the '60s, Ness said he was
familiar with the scent of burning marijuana, but not of fresh pot.

"You never experienced marijuana except when it was lit?" LeDressay
asked.

"That's right."

He said there were lots of smells floating around the farm, primarily
horse, llama and dog dung.

"Was there not a constant smell [of marijuana]?" LeDressay
asked.

"No."

Supreme Court Justice William Grist didn't believe
it.

Calling Ness's testimony "incredible," he convicted the now 64-yearold
pensioner on both charges.

"The fact there was a grow op, and a large one at that, was
unmistakeable," he ruled. "I'm satisfied the smell of the operation
was clearly evident.

"Mr. Ness is clearly not mentally challenged," he said. An educated
man, Grist said Ness would have been able to recognize the signs of an
illegal enterprise. And the judge deemed keys and a notepad found in
the house as "incriminating evidence." Ness will be sentenced at a
later date.

Second person charged

Earlier this year, a second person was charged in connection with the
grow operation.

Lloyd Allan McConnell, who owned the property, was charged in March
with production of a controlled substance, possession for the purpose
of trafficking, and fraudulently consuming electricity or gas.

McConnell is scheduled to appear in court May 29. 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D