A medical marijuana card does not grant permission for someone to smoke pot in a car parked in a public place, according to a ruling from the Michigan Court of Appeals.
Robert Carlton is a medical marijuana cardholder who at 11:30 pm in August of 2013 was caught smoking pot while sitting in his car in the parking lot of a casino in Mount Pleasant.
He was charged with a misdemeanor.
Michigan’s medical marijuana law specifically says cardholders can’t smoke in public places.
Carlton successfully argued in lower courts the interior of his car is not open to the public, so he was not guilty of smoking marijuana in a public place.
But a majority on the three-judge appeals court panel sided with the prosecutor’s logic that the casino parking lot is a public place, and reinstated the charge.
From the majority opinion: “It is undisputed that Carlton was smoking marijuana in plain sight while seated in his own car and that his car was parked in a parking lot that was open to the public.”
Also from the opinion: “A person’s car is private property, and, in that sense, one might characterize the interior space of a car as a “place” that is private, or at least privately owned. However, a parking lot, which is open to the general public, is open for the specific purpose of allowing the members of the public to park their vehicles.”
However, the court specifically declined to address whether leased parking spaces or rented campsites count as public or private places for the purposes of the medical marijuana law.
The decision says using marijuana in a residence where outsiders can see through a window is not smoking pot in a public place.
Judge Douglas Shapiro broke with the other two judges.
He said the issue is a factual one, not a legal one and should be decided by a jury:
“I think the majority is too quick to ignore the common-sense privacy component of a personal vehicle. The majority looks only at whether the vehicle itself is in a place defined as public. But the statutory language leaves open the possibility that in some circumstances a private vehicle can constitute a ‘private place’ even though it is located in an area to which the public has access. While this is not always the case, I do not think that the drafters and electors intended to wholly foreclose it as a matter of law.”
Carlton, the defendant, may appeal the decision to the Michigan Supreme Court.
