Douglas County D.A. drops felony drug charges against Lawrence CBD store owners
Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson’s office has dropped felony drug charges against the owners of a Lawrence CBD store.
Prosecutors pressed charges against Annie Martin and Sean Lefler for selling hemp flower, which looks and smells like marijuana but is chemically different. Hemp does not contain enough mind-altering THC to cause a high and is now legal to grow in Kansas.
Sarah Swain, the defense attorney for Martin and Lefler, said the charges were especially hypocritical in Lawrence, where the city council has reduced penalties for possessing small amounts of marijuana to a $1 fine.
Prosecutors on Thursday dismissed the cases against the couple and one of their employees without prejudice, meaning they can revive the case if they choose. The state had been scheduled to present evidence against Martin and Lefler in court on Friday.
Branson’s office did not say why it chose to drop the cases.
“The cases have been dismissed pending further review by the District Attorney’s Office,” Cheryl Wright Kunard, a spokeswoman for the office, said in a one-sentence statement.
Martin, a former elementary school teacher, faced felonies for THC possession and distribution. If convicted, she could have faced up to 206 months — more than 17 years — in state prison, her lawyer said.
“I’m relieved for now,” she said.
Martin said the case has cost her family upward of $100,000 on legal fees and lost equipment, inventory and cash seized by law enforcement.
“It’s been a complete and total nightmare,” she said. “I never in my wildest imagination would have thought this could turn into what it did.”
Martin believes the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which twice raided the store, misunderstood the distinction between marijuana and hemp. Across the country, law enforcement agencies have had trouble distinguishing between the two. In some cases, patrol officers discover a truckload of product, unclear whether they’ve found a legal agricultural commodity or the biggest drug bust of their careers.
The store had lab reports from manufacturers showing that their products contained only trace amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the intoxicating element in marijuana.
KBI documents showed some of the store’s products contained no THC. Other products were shown to contain some THC, but no testing was done to determine the actual percentage of THC, Swain said.
In August, Branson’s office would not answer The Star’s questions about whether it makes a distinction between marijuana and hemp in prosecuting cases. A spokesperson only said that charging documents “reflect our position that marijuana was being sold at a CBD product store.”
Those charging documents alleged the two store owners possessed more than a kilogram of THC.
Branson’s decision on the CBD store comes just weeks after he announced his office would stop filing criminal cases for simple marijuana possession offenses.
“After a careful survey of policies in other cities, including Lawrence, Wichita, and Kansas City, Missouri,” Branson said in an Oct. 17 news release, “the District Attorney’s Office will no longer prosecute cases of simple marijuana possession.”
It’s the second high-profile reversal from his office in recent days: On Oct. 28, he moved to drop all charges against a University of Kansas student who had been accused of falsely reporting a rape. In a statement, the district attorney said he believed in the merits of the case, but the “cost to our community and the negative impact on survivors of sexual violence cannot be ignored.”
Chief Assistant District Attorney Amy McGowan was prosecuting the case against the CBD store owners.
But she retired early this month amid protests that called for her firing or resignation over her handling of a 1996 double-murder case in Kansas City that sent Ricky Kidd to prison. The case against Kidd was dismissed after a judge, citing recanted testimony and evidence prosecutors failed to disclose, ruled that Kidd was innocent of the crime.
An elementary school teacher for more than 16 years, Martin and her fiance opened Free State Collective in east Lawrence in 2018.
Martin realized the CBD market was still emerging: the couple called every state agency they could think of looking for guidance and regulatory approval, but got few answers. She said they acquired third-party lab results on their products. Their Free State Collective was just one in the ever-expanding sea of CBD stores selling everything from hemp-derived oils to dog treats.
As they have for marijuana, states have become increasingly permissive of hemp, which was for decades outlawed under federal law. Kansas this year launched an industrial hemp research program that has put the leafy green plant into hundreds of acres of farm fields across the state. Missouri will roll out a similar pilot program next year.
Lefler said the couple plans to close the Lawrence store later this month.
They plan to open KC Collective near 85th and Wornall in Kansas City.
He said word of the KBI raids, along with an unrelated shooting next door at Playerz Sports Bar last weekend, has scared off local customers. Two people were injured in that incident and the suspect later died.
Lefler said the Lawrence Police Department visited his CBD store earlier this year to inquire about his security cameras as they were keeping an eye on the nearby bar. He said he offered to hand over his store’s footage. Lawrence police were not involved in the KBI’s raids or the county’s prosecution of the store owners. .
But KBI agents seized his digital recording device that could have captured evidence of the shooting, he said.
“This whole thing is insane,” Lefler said. “We were working with local law enforcement to help clean up this place.”
