Pot Grower Gets 6 Months

DAYTON - Despite efforts by the Columbia County prosecutor to get all three pot-growing suspects half a decade in jail each, only one of the Mexican nationals arrested this summer faces such a term in federal prison.

The other two are expected to serve only half a year in county jail before facing deportation by federal immigration authorities.

Santiago Orozco Contreras was the first of three Mexican nationals taken into custody after a raid on federal land in mid-July and charged with manufacturing marijuana and being in possession of a firearm.

He was turned over to federal authorities several weeks ago after the U.S. Attorney's Office Eastern District of Washington sought a grand jury indictment against him. He is reportedly on track to receive a five-year sentence for growing pot in the Umatilla National Forest.

The second pair of suspected marijuana growers, Jose Meraz Farias and Martin Chipres Madriz, was arrested in the Blue Mountains in August, but their alleged marijuana-growing operation was on state and privatelyowned land, said Julie Karl, assistant to County Prosecutor Rea Culwell.

After pleading guilty last month, Madriz was sentenced last Thursday to six months in Columbia County jail. Meraz-Farias signed a plea agreement early last week, committing to serving the same half-year sentence as Madriz in exchange for a guilty plea based on the same charges. He has not been sentenced yet.

Culwell forwarded the details of Madriz and Meraz- Farias' case to the U.S. Attorney's Office, hoping they would take theirs, too. But federal authorities declined to pursue the matter citing a lack of resources to seek an indictment against them.

The fact that the second pair of suspects was charged with the same offenses as Contreras just outside federal lands doesn't preclude the U.S. Attorney's Office from taking their case, Culwell said.

She said she was disappointed in the decision, which limits the offenders' prosecution to the local courts system, yielding no more than six-month sentences.

The three arrests capped a summer in which local law, state and federal law enforcement agents seized a record number of marijuana plants at a handful of separate locations in the mountains.

They recovered and destroyed 37,000 plants with an estimated street value of about $38 million.