Tonya Maxwell

tmaxwell@citizen-times.com

ASHEVILLE – A former physician turned medical marijuana advocate was convicted on Monday of a host of drug-related offenses, including trafficking in opium or heroin, charges that together bring a sentence of more than 18 years.

Meanwhile, prosecutors on Tuesday said they will likely drop charges against Monroe Gordon Piland III, 70, that relate to allegations he gave his underage son marijuana, sometimes mixed with goat’s milk.

Those charges arose following a child custody case during which Piland took the stand and admitted giving the boy marijuana, said Alex Bass the assistant Buncombe County district attorney who prosecuted the case.

“In district court, his son had to take the stand and he cross-examined his son,” Bass said. “Frankly, we tried this one first because I don’t want to put the son on the stand to be cross-examined by his father, who was acting as his own attorney. That just wouldn’t do anybody any good. Given the time he’s gotten, it’s likely I’m going to dismiss the cases involving child abuse and giving marijuana to his son.”

In another felony change, officers also alleged that Piland gave a teacher chocolate balls mixed with marijuana on Valentine’s Day in 2013. That charge also will likely be dropped, Bass said, explaining that the woman now resides in Indonesia. Given that Piland is expected to serve nearly two decades in prison, prosecutors do not expect to fly the teacher back.

Piland represented himself at trial before a Buncombe County jury in a case that began in October 2015, when a social worker alerted the Buncombe County Anticrime Task Force to a possible marijuana grow operation at his Candler home.

Agents later found 7.4 pounds of marijuana, 58 grams of poppies, morphine sulphate, mushrooms, marijuana candies and marijuana oils.

“This case involved a marijuana grow operation together with a large cache of dangerous and highly addictive opioid drugs for sale and distribution,” Bass said in a statement. “As the defendant’s operation was located directly across the street from a licensed day care facility, the state is satisfied and respects the decision of the jury which on the strength of the evidence rendered guilty verdicts in all charged counts in less than thirty minutes after a week-long trial.”

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Piland on Monday was sentenced to a minimum term of 18 years and nine months to a maximum of 23 years and six months for the trafficking offense by Superior Court Judge Gregory Horne. He was also fined $500,000.

The jury also found Piland guilty of possession with intent to sell and distribute marijuana within 1,000 feet of a daycare, manufacture marijuana within 1,000 feet of a daycare and possession of marijuana paraphernalia and maintaining a dwelling for the keeping of controlled substances, along with related charges.

Sentences for those convictions will run concurrently with the trafficking offense.

Piland obtained a North Carolina medical license in 1979, and in 1981 was convicted in Dare County of felony manufacturing a controlled substance and possession of marijuana, according to records filed with the Board of Medical Examiners. His license was formally revoked in 1984.

The Board, in its decision to pull his license, found Piland was growing marijuana for a cancer patient, who did not ask him to provide the plant and never expressed a desire to have him do so. Officials also determined he never attempted to transfer the patient to Duke University Medical School, which was then offering a legal and experimental program that offered marijuana to cancer patients in an effort to control nausea brought on by chemotherapy.