AURORA, Colo., Dec. 18 (UPI) -- A Colorado man is asking that police return medicinal marijuana plants they seized from him.
Kevin Dickes, 39, a state-certified medical marijuana user and Desert Storm veteran is asking Arapahoe District Court to get 71 plants police seized April 27 from his Aurora, Colo., basement returned.
"He was carefully and meticulously cultivating this. Mr. Dickes should get his medicine back," said Dickes' attorney, Robert Corry Jr.
Under Colorado law, pot plants seized from state-certified patients during criminal investigations must be returned in good shape at the end of court cases. But authorities have said Dickes plants are dead, the Rocky Mountain News reported Tuesday.
After Dickes was taken to jail, his girlfriend alerted authorities to his status as a medical marijuana user.
"This means to people in my neighborhood I'm not a criminal," said Dickes, decorated Marine with chronic vascular disease and pain from shrapnel injuries who says pharmaceutical narcotics make him sick. "I'm a decent, law- abiding citizen."
Aurora police Detective Shannon Lucy said the episode could have been avoided if Dickes had told authorities he was a medical marijuana patient.
"We probably wouldn't have taken him into custody and we wouldn't have destroyed the plants," Lucy said.
