Wyoming prosecutor censured over hemp-THC lie

A prosecutor in Wyoming has been publicly censured for not correcting errant THC information in a failed prosecution attempt against a registered hemp cultivator.

Laramie County’s David Singleton, a senior assistant district attorney, was also fined $800 by the state bar association, which issued the censure, The Wyoming Tribune Eagle newspaper reported.

The bar association says that Singleton knew that a law enforcement officer’s testimony during a July 2020 preliminary hearing wrongly overstated THC found in the plants, but did not object to it at the time.

The case centered around hemp plants found in a Laramie County barn, which testing showed were below the THC content that would make them illegal in the state. The court found at that hearing that there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue the charges that the plants were marijuana.