2 men hauling hemp plants in Idaho last year plead guilty to marijuana charge
On the same day the Idaho Senate voted to legalize hauling hemp through the state, two truckers pleaded guilty to felony possession of marijuana with the intent to deliver for bringing hemp plants across state lines in April 2018.
Ada County District Judge Jonathan Medema accepted the guilty pleas of Erich Eisenhart, 25, of Oregon, and Andrew D’Addario, 27, of Colorado, on Tuesday morning.
Both men pleaded guilty to the possession with the intent to deliver charge, which was amended down from drug trafficking. Pleading guilty to the lesser charge helped them avoid a mandatory minimum prison sentence that a drug trafficking conviction could have carried.
The men were reportedly hauling the plants from a licensed industrial hemp farm in Colorado to a licensed farm in Oregon. Hemp plants are still illegal in Idaho at the moment, despite the fact that local grocery stores regularly sell products with hemp in them. Idaho law does not distinguish between marijuana and hemp; it just states that cannabis is illegal.
In court, Medema asked both men to explain why they were pleading guilty. They both acknowledged that they were in Ada County and Idaho with the plants, but did not believe the plants were the type of cannabis that creates a high.
“These plants I believe were hemp, but were genus cannabis, and I now know that any plant that is genus cannabis is considered to be marijuana,” D’Addario told the judge, according to a review of the audio from Tuesday’s hearing.
When asked why he was pleading guilty, Eisenhart told the judge something similar.
“I possessed plants of the genus cannabis with the intention to deliver it to another party. I now know that all species under the genus cannabis are illegal and considered marijuana in this state,” Eisenhart told the judge.
When the men were arrested in April 2018, they reported that they were hauling industrial hemp plants. The federal farm bill legalizing the production and transport of such hemp was not passed until the end of 2018, even though some states had legalized it. Both men were arrested at the time police stopped them but have since been out on bond.
Eisenhart and D’Addario are set for sentencing on June 25 and could face up to five years in prison.
The Idaho Legislature is working on a bill that would change the state’s ban and allow hemp plants to be hauled through Idaho, but even if this becomes law, it’s not clear whether anything in the legislation could retroactively affect the men’s convictions.