B.C. Supreme Court Justice Victoria Gray will decide today whether to dismiss a case against two men arrested when police swooped in on what was believed to have been the largest marijuana grow operation uncovered in the province's history.
Gray heard oral arguments Tuesday from defence counsel Ben Levine and Jon Duncan claiming there is not sufficient evidence to prove the two guilty of possessing and producing the marijuana.
If Gray agrees, Ye Zhi Qiang, 41 and Khue Ba Vu, 29, will be acquitted. If not, defence will still have the option of presenting evidence in support of their position.
Qiang, Vu and a third man, whose charges were later dropped, were arrested May 27, 2010 when police seized about 18,000 marijuana plants, with an estimated street value of $2.2 million, from a site in the Eaglet Lake area near Giscome, 40 km east of Prince George.
The marijuana was being grown on private property in 20 makeshift greenhouses assembled from canvas, tarps and trees while three tents served as sleeping and cooking quarters, police said at the time.
In submissions Tuesday, Levine and Duncan suggested the two, who needed interpreters to take in the court proceedings, were victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and could just as easily have been hunting or hiking in the area when police closed in.
Neither of the two were found with equipment commonly associated with either activity, but Levine contended they could have panicked and dropped their gear when they saw a RCMP helicopter flying overhead with an officer issuing commands through a loudspeaker.
"A more logical or reasonable inference for the accused is they had heard a large helicopter swooping upon them, blaring words in a foreign language," Levine said. "A heightened sense of excitement would have fell upon anybody in that circumstance, so they were fleeing circumstances they couldn't understand."
Defence counsel also made much of an arresting officer's apparent confusion over the colour of one of the accused's jackets and noted another officers admitted during testimony he did not know which direction once of the two was coming from when he was apprehended.
In response, Crown prosecutor Edlyn Laurie noted that the one officer was frank about his confusion over the jacket's colour, particularly when he first saw the accused running through the area.
The other officer who was unsure of which direction the suspect was heading did testify that the greenhouses were in the background behind the accused when he was arrested, she also noted.
To locate a marijuana grow operation of that size and value in an area commonly used for public recreation would be absurd, Laurie said.
The site is surrounded on two sides by water and by dense forest on the others with a single road heading onto the property, Laurie said, and contended the two were running from the greenhouses into the forest when they were caught.
"In my submission, it's simply a common sense inference," Laurie said.
