Woman gets probation for pot-growing operation

Woman gets probation for pot-growing operation

By Lisa Roose-Church
DAILY PRESS & ARGUS

A former Ann Arbor Police Department records clerk was sentenced Thursday to three years of probation for having a marijuana-growing operation in her Putnam Township home.

Dawn Marie Hamell, 47, earlier pleaded guilty in Livingston County Circuit Court to one count of delivery or manufacturing 5-45 kilograms, or about 12.5 pounds
to 99 pounds, of marijuana in exchange for a second count being dismissed.

She faced up to seven years in prison, but was sentenced to probation under a plea deal with prosecutors.

"I would like to apologize for my behavior and what we were doing in our home," Hamell said prior to sentencing.

She said she and her husband, William Russell Hamell, have since redecorated the former pot room to a bedroom.

Defense attorney David Goldstein said his client helped her husband in the growing operation "for their own personal use and were not selling (the marijuana) for profit." However, Goldstein said, William Hamell "would give marijuana to others" to alleviate their pain from a medical malady.

Both Goldstein and Judge Stanley J. Latreille noted the irony of the situation since Livingston County voters passed a ballot proposal Tuesday legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes.

"This is a woman who has an ongoing substance abuse problem," Goldstein said, although he said she has not used drugs since her arrest.

Oakland County sheriff's officers, Hamburg Township police and undercover narcotics officers raided the couple's Wynns Drive home, off Darwin Road, on May 9 after an informant tipped off police to the growing operation. Officers then used an Oakland County Sheriff's Department's helicopter equipped with heat-detecting equipment, which found a heat signature compatible with a marijuana-growing operation.

Officers said they seized 11 guns and about 30 pounds of packaged marijuana, grown by people they described as "experts" at indoor cultivation.

Police also confiscated 44 marijuana plants. The street value was about $200,000, police said.

Police also seized $28,170 in cash and are attempting to seize the Hamells' home, worth about $300,000 under drug forfeiture laws.

William Hamell, 59, was sentenced in October to probation and ordered to wear an electronic tether for 90 days after he pleaded guilty to both charges.

Dawn Hamell said she was fired from the Ann Arbor Police Department where she had worked since 1991.

Contact Daily Press & Argus reporter Lisa Roose-Church at (517) 552-2846 or at lrchurch@gannett.com.