SOMERVILLE — Mark Remeta never disputed that he grew marijuana plants in his Raritan Borough basement, but he claimed he was not running a production facility. In a split verdict today, a jury agreed with that argument and found Remeta not guilty of maintaining a narcotics production facility, a first-degree offense that could have put him in state prison for 10 to 20 years. The 49-year-old Remeta was convicted of a lesser offense of manufacturing marijuana. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 15. “I’m just thankful that the jury...did the right thing,” said Remeta’s attorney, James Wronko, who said going through the trial was an “absolute waste of Somerset County judicial resources, taxpayers’ money.” Prosecutors declined to comment on the verdict. Borough police discovered 34 marijuana plants in Remeta’s basement when they visited his Brentwood Road home on Dec. 10, 2011 in search of a missing cell phone, said Somerset County Assistant Prosecutor Michael McLaughlin. Another man told police he lost his cell phone on a train the previous night and used a GPS program to track it to Brentwood Road, McLaughlin said. When police asked Remeta about the smell in his house, he admitted to having marijuana in the basement and consented to a search, McLaughlin said. In an audio recording of an interview played in court today, Remeta told police the marijuana was for his own personal use, not to sell, and said his basement system “started out as just something small, just to see if I can do it, and I guess I just…got carried away.” But the case mainly centered on whether Remeta had grown at least 10 marijuana plants, the minimum number for him to be convicted of maintaining a narcotics production facility. McLaughlin said a state expert tested eight plants as part of a particular formula that provided “statistical certainty” that 13 plants were confirmed as marijuana. Wronko had argued the state failed to prove there were 10 marijuana plants.
Posted on: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 23:54:42 +0000
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