Crime boss or champion of the poor? Marijuana activist awaits sentencing

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Was Windsor marijuana activist Leo Lucier the “head of a sophisticated criminal operation” or a compassionate Windsorite selling cannabis to those in pain while raising funds to help the poor in his community?

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Those were the two parts presented by the prosecution and defense to an Ontario Court judge who must now determine a proper sentence after Lucier, 51, was found guilty of establishing a business that was openly and illegally selling weed. mind altering.

As a result of Lucier’s pleading guilty in August, the federal prosecutor on Friday asked the judge to drop the same Cannabis Act charges that had been brought against four co-defendants.

The other four were arrested during a police raid on November 2, 2018, at Compassion House, located in a small Tecumseh Road shopping center west of Ouellette Avenue. Lucier, who was absent when the other “volunteers” were arrested at the business he owned and operated, turned himself in to city police the next day.

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The raid and the charges were the first at the local level under Canada’s new Cannabis Act, which took effect just two weeks earlier with the federal legalization of recreational marijuana use by adults.

“The laws were very much in a gray area at the time,” defense attorney Elizabeth Craig said, citing a media report during that period when even the Windsor police chief wasn’t “sure what the laws were.” . With Ontario’s relatively slow response to implementing a retail regime under new federal legislation, Craig explained that Compassion House’s goal was to help the many struggling at the time to access medical marijuana.

To shop at Compassion House, he told Judge Mark Hornblower, customers had to fill out membership forms proving they were 19 or older. Lucier “never intended to profit from the business,” he added, and the proceeds went to helping community organizations and those in need.

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When police ordered the business to stop selling cannabis, Craig said the response was to offer rolled marijuana joints in exchange for food and other donations. Within days, he said, Lucier had collected more than six tons of food and more than 300 coats that he later distributed to food banks and the local mission and youth center.

“Charitable behavior does not absolve Mr. Lucier of criminal behavior,” responded federal prosecutor Armando D’Alessandro. Stories at the time from the Windsor Star and other media outlets about Lucier’s good deeds, which Craig showed the judge to illustrate his client’s philanthropy, only “embellished the status of a drug dealer,” he said.

D’Alessandro said police seized “a staggering amount” of cannabis products in the raid, including about 2.4 kilograms of cannabis, as well as items such as gummy bears, cookies and marijuana-infused oils.

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By emphasizing the need to deter others, the Crown is seeking a $ 20,000 fine and the forfeiture of everything seized in the raid, including about $ 4,000 in cash. The defense asked for a fine in the range of $ 1,000 to $ 2,500. Craig told the Star that the defense is contemplating a discussion on the Crown’s forfeiture lawsuit. The judge’s decision is expected in November.

About $ 3,000 of the seized cash, Craig said, were donations being collected for the funeral expenses of a local family in which a brother killed his brother, a young man who was a Compassion House volunteer.

Helping crime victims with funeral expenses was just one of the ways Lucier was giving back to the community, he told the court.

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