The court of appeals reversed a district court judgment. The court held that a defendant accused of growing marijuana on rural family property in Oregon was denied his Sixth Amendment right to make a defense where he was completely barred from obtaining discovery and arguing that the operation was the work of one of the Mexican drug trafficking operations that recently had infiltrated the state.
Officers executed a search warrant regarding a 400-acre rural Oregon property on which Andrew Stever and his mother lived. The search revealed a marijuana growing operation in an isolated corner of the property where it bordered a smaller tract belonging to the Forest Service. Most of the thousands of marijuana plants were growing on the Stever property, but some were on the government property, together with a small camouflaged campsite and a disassembled greenhouse.
