BANGOR, Maine — Federal prosecutors said the men convicted of operating the state’s most sophisticated outdoor marijuana plantation don’t deserve a new trial because there is no new evidence in the case, contrary to what the men’s attorneys claimed.
Malcolm French, 53, of Enfield, Rodney Russell, 51, of South Thomaston and Kendall Chase, 58, of Bradford were found guilty on a variety of charges in connection with the pot farm on Jan. 24, 2014, after a 10-day jury trial. The jury ordered French to forfeit land in LaGrange and Township 37 where it found marijuana had been grown.
On July 31, French’s attorney Thomas Hallett of Portland, filed a motion seeking a new trial. Hallett, who recently joined the defense team, argued that the LaGrange plot witnesses testified about during the trial was not on land owned by French but on a nearby plot.
Information in a typewritten anonymous note discovered in March by French’s son, Thomas French, at the family business in LaGrange led to the motion, Hallett said. The note states that the marijuana plot Winston McTague, a key witness at the January 2014 jury trial, worked on was “one mile as the crow flies from the French camp, almost 3 miles by foot, and not located on French property.”
The motion for a new trial also accused the U.S. attorney’s office of prosecutorial misconduct, being aware that McTague perjured himself, and withholding discovery information.
“The third motion makes broad claims about perjury, fabricated and hidden evidence, and prosecutorial misconduct,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Lowell wrote in the 19-page objection to the motion, filed Friday. “The accusations are not true. The defendant’s motion for a new trial is factually inaccurate, legally insufficient, and contains reckless accusations of unethical and illegal conduct by the government that are patently false. For the reasons set forth in detail below, their motion for a new trial should be denied without a hearing.”
Lowell said the “unsigned, unauthenticated, and anonymous” note is “inadmissible hearsay and not evidence at all.”
“It is a convenient vehicle to justify what would otherwise be an awkward argument to make — that the attorneys or the defendants had missed the discovery that would have led to the evidence that they are now claiming is ‘new’ evidence that calls for a new trial,” he said.
In a footnote, the prosecutor called the timing of the discovery of the note “suspicious.” The note allegedly was found after oral arguments on two previous motions for a new trial were held on March 17.
U.S. District Judge John Woodcock denied those motions in April.
French, Russell and Chase are scheduled to be sentenced along with Haynes Timberland Inc., the firm that owns the land where the farm was located in Washington County, on Sept. 30 in federal court in Bangor.
If a new trial were to be ordered, all three defendants would be tried again.