Connellsville Marijuana Grandmother Found Not Guilty
A 67-year-old woman was acquitted of charges, after she was accused of growing four-foot tall marijuana plants in her backyard.
Police had arrived at Alberta Kelley’s house after an anonymous tipster claimed that someone was growing marijuana at the address. Police found the marijuana plant growing alongside some tomato plants in the garden, but Kelly said she didn’t know what type of plants they were.
“When I asked Kelley what the plants were, she stated that she did not know what they were,” Officer Wesley Wilson said in a criminal complaint. She also stated that a man that she did not know gave her the seeds and told her to plant them.
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Kelley’s attorney claims the man who gave her the seeds told her that they would yield the prettiest flowers that she had ever seen.
"She said she was walking to the community center when some guy with a beard and Smurf hat she did not know gave her the seeds," said Kelley's attorney, Thomas W. Shaffer of Uniontown.
The plants were confiscated and taken to a lab where they were verified to be marijuana. The plants weighed a total of 138 grams, which could earn as much as $2000 if sold for drug use. Police were not convinced that Kelley was unaware that she was growing an illegal substance. Jurors however, acquitted the woman of all charges.
The cannabis plant has many different uses, outside of providing a recreational drug. The plant is also grown to produce hemp, a durable soft fiber that is retrieved from the stalk of the plant. Plants grown for this use often yield very little tetrahydrocannab (THC), which composes the main psychoactive constituent of the cannabis plant.
