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Pot-growing prison officer gets probation
By Hempology | November 21, 2003
From the Vancouver Sun, November 21st, 2003
By Glenn Bohn
A man who grew marijuana plants in his backyard shed while working as a correctional officer at
a youth prison in Burnaby was put on probation for a year Thursday and ordered to do 70 hours
of community and volunteer work.
Daniel Patrick Hogan testified he suffered from chronic pain caused by a knee injury he suffered
at work in 1989, and that surgery and drugs did not give relieve the pain.
Hogan ruled out seeking a medical exemption from Health Canada that would have allowed
him to use the illegal plant, because his employer, the B.C. children and family development
ministry, would have been notified.
He said he decided to grow marijuana for his own use because he didn’t want to support organized
crime by buying marijuana.
However, in February, 2002, police found 26 marijuana plants growing in soil-filled buckets in a
small room constructed in a garden shed in Hogan’s yard. He was fired from his government job in
May, 2002.
Just how police learned there were pot plants in Hogan’s garden shed wasn’t disclosed in court
Thursday. According to the judge’s written reasons on sentence, Hogan’s wife was shocked when
police searched the family home, and she didn’t know her husband had been growing marijuana.
(The federal justice department also laid drug charges against his wife, but the judge acquitted
her.)
“I’ve been set up,” Hogan said outside provincial court in Surrey after he was sentenced.
The federal justice department had also charged Hogan with possession of marijuana for the
purposes of trafficking – a charge the trial judge threw out last August – and Hogan’s lawyer
blasted the federal justice department for laying the more serious trafficking charge, saying
that was what resulted in his client being fired.
According to the written reasons on sentence that Judge A.E. Rounthwaite released Thursday,
Hogan filed a grievance after losing his correctional service job at the Youth Detention Centre
in Burnaby.
The judge said Hogan is trying to remain in the B.C. Government Employees Union so he can be
retrained.
According to the written judgement last August, Hogan’s doctor confirmed his health problems
and suggested marijuana would likely relieve pain and improve his appetite and sleep.
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