Prosecutors to drop marijuana-trafficking charges against two hemp security officers
PAWHUSKA OK August 2 2019 — Two hemp security officers charged with marijuana trafficking are expected to have their cases dismissed next week as investigators said they were “duped” into shipping illegal cannabis.
Attorney Matt Lyons said he has received an email confirmation from prosecutors that they will dismiss the charges against his clients Aug. 7 during a court appearance in Osage County District Court.
District Attorney Mike Fisher dropped the same drug-trafficking charges against the truck shipment’s two drivers in March because neither man was fully aware of the cargo’s contents.
But Andrew Ross and David Dirksen, veterans who co-founded Patriot Shield Security to provide protection for hemp transports, were still in hot water.
“We knew we were innocent from the beginning,” Ross said. “As stressful as it was with that sort of sentence over our heads, there weren’t too many points where I was that worried or thought that anyone would convict me or send me to life in prison for what we were doing.”
A statement from Fisher’s office states the investigators’ belief that the seller of the contents in the truck “was involved in the illegal transport of marijuana under the guise of an industrial hemp shipment.” It states that the belief was formed after a probe by Pawhuska police as well as a private investigation through the defense attorneys.
“Additional evidence has come to light to indicate that (Ross and Dirksen) were duped by the seller into participating in the illegal shipment of 4,326 pounds of marijuana,” the statement reads. “As a result, the State will be dismissing the charges against both security guards in the interests of justice.”
According to the statement — signed off on by Fisher, the Colorado buyer and the defense attorneys — a federal lawsuit has been brought by the Colorado buyer of the shipment against the Kentucky seller.
The six-month saga exposed how unprepared Oklahoma — and likely other states — were for legal industrial hemp after President Donald Trump signed the 2018 Farm Bill into law Dec. 20.
Patriot Shield Security had existed for only a few months before the hemp seizure and their arrests Jan. 9, which Ross said landed them in a “pretty bad financial situation.” But he believes the business is “much farther ahead” now than it otherwise would be given the media attention and has expanded into four states.
He said they now hold licenses in Oklahoma for armed security, marijuana processing and hemp cultivation. The latter two are because the state doesn’t have transportation licenses, he said.
“Now we know firsthand how to deal with it and the worst-case scenario, which is product being seized as non-compliant hemp,” Ross said.
Tulsa World
