Pubdate: Tue, 25 Aug 2015
Source: Sentinel Review (CN ON)
Copyright: 2015 Woodstock Sentinel Review
Contact: http://www.woodstocksentinelreview.com/letters
Website: http://www.woodstocksentinelreview.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2385
Author: Heather Rivers
Page: A3

DRUG CHARGES STAYED AGAINST LOCAL WOMAN

Clients have launched lawsuit against OPP

A drug charge against a local business owner laid in June 2014 was
stayed Monday morning in a Brantford courtroom.

Cheryl MacLellan, 57, had been charged with producing a Schedule II
substance after police responded to an alarm at a Burford building on
Rutherland Street.

According to a spokesperson from the Public Prosecution Service of
Canada, the decision to stay or withdraw charges "means they
discontinue the prosecution."

"In both situations, once your charges are withdrawn or stayed by the
Crown, you don't have to go back to court," spokesperson Sujata
Raisinghani wrote in an e-mail.

MacLellan said she had been renting space in the Burford warehouse to
grow medical marijuana for two ill people.

"I'm very relieved but also very dismayed that it ruined medical
marijuana for two very ill people," she said.

MacLellan, a former Woodstock police officer, as well as the former
owner of Hemp County, was scheduled for a trial later this year.

MacLellan, who had a licence to grow medical marijuana, said police
officers found trim and rubbing alcohol in her legal grow operation
and "leapt to the conclusion we were making cannabis oil there."

"I was always confident we would have won at trial," she said during a
phone interview Monday after the charge was stayed. "Everything they
seized was authorized for the medical marijuana program."

MacLellan, who now owns Country Infusion Bistro in Woodstock, said she
was also upset that police identified her building, forcing her to
close the operation down.

"After that, we were never safe there," she said. "They identified the
location."

She said the cost of shutting down the operation was approximately
$100,000.

MacLellan said the two affected clients have launched a lawsuit
against the Brant County OPP.

The OPP said they were unable to provide a comment on the case when
contacted by the Woodstock Sentinel-Review Monday afternoon.
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