COLUMBUS - Overseers of Ohio's new medical marijuana industry defended how they picked 24 businesses to run the state's marijuana farms, including the hiring of a convicted felon.

Ohio paid Trevor C. Bozeman to score the applicants for marijuana farms – a highly competitive process where winners will benefit from the new industry's substantial profits. But Bozeman was convicted in 2005 of possession with intent to manufacture or distribute a controlled substance in Pennsylvania and was sentenced to three years of probation.

Ohio Department of Commerce never ran a background check on Bozeman. Neither state law nor office policy required it. But officials from senators to governor candidates have railed against the decision. They have called for a freeze of the state's new marijuana program to possibly re-score the applicants.

"We do not check backgrounds on individuals that we are hiring as subject-matter experts,” said Jacqueline Williams, director of the Ohio Department of Commerce. “The individual that we selected, Dr. Bozeman, has significant subject-matter expertise. I am certainly, more than anybody, aware of the optics of this situation, but we followed all of our processes.”

“We are satisfied with the expertise he provided, and we wouldn’t have done anything any differently," Williams explained to the Medical Marijuana Advisory Committee, which met Thursday.

Shelby County Sheriff John Lenhart, who is a member of the committee, asked Williams to conduct background checks in the future. “It’s a good business practice.”

“There are experts out there who have not been convicted of crimes,” said Lenhart, who suggested using experts at the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation as an alternative.

Meanwhile, Illinois-based PharmaCann's Ohio offshoot filed a lawsuit against the state, saying PharmaCann should have been awarded a license over lower-scoring applicants owned by minorities. State law required 15 percent of cultivator, processor or laboratory licenses be awarded to companies owned or controlled by minorities.

In the lawsuit, PharmaCann said it would have been awarded a license if not for the "impermissible, racially discriminatory practice." A local company, CannAscend Ohio, is planning a separate lawsuit.

The lawsuit was not discussed at Thursday's meeting. Officials will follow Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine's advice and hire a third-party, independent investigator to handle concerns with the application process.

“In a highly competitive selection process like this, where there are 109 applications, 12 awarded. People that are not awarded licenses are going to find flaws with the process,” said Justin Hunt, chief operating officer for the Ohio Medical Marijuana Control Program.

Another flaw is a consultant hired to score marijuana farms worked for a business owned by one of the companies awarded a license, Cleveland.com reported.

Still, Hunt detailed the care that Ohio officials took to score marijuana farms in a fair and impartial way.

Of the 109 applicants for larger marijuana farms, 73 were disqualified for having incomplete or inadequate plans on operations, finances and security among other requirements. Of the 76 smaller farms, only 12 applicants qualified and those 12 were chosen.

"This is as close to perfect, I think, as it can come," said Marcie Seidel, executive director of Drug Free Action Alliance and a committee member. "I regret the fact that there people out there are throwing hand grenades in the media to try to discredit it when I think, in fact, it is an incredible process."

Those awarded provisional licenses have nine months to build a facility that meets the state's requirements for operating a marijuana farm. One company broke ground on its new facility in Yellow Springs Thursday, moving ahead despite the drama over sites' selection. Each site will need to pass a state inspection.