How an open door opened the way for a pot bust

A Yuba County sheriff’s deputy discovered what turned out to be a large, indoor marijuanagrowing operation because he simply walked through an open door, according to court records.

That discovery led to an arrest warrant issued Friday for a San Francisco man, Lawrence Pitcher, who now faces three felony charges.

It’s not Pitcher’s first brush with the law. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to six felony drug charges in federal court in Boston, court records said.

In March, the Sheriff’s Office received a call about an open back door at a warehouse in the 4500 block of Skyway Drive.

When the deputy arrived, according to a search warrant affidavit, he noted two vehicles parked in front of the warehouse and “security cameras installed on all four corners of the warehouse.”

The deputy then went into the warehouse and found interior rooms had been constructed with a “complex ventilation/filter system” attached to each, the affidavit said.

There were no drugs in the warehouse, however.

Last month, a county building inspector received a complaint about the warehouse. The complainant said the occupants were “antisocial” and had confronted the complaining person “for looking into their warehouse through a fence that divides the properties,” the affidavit said.

The next day, the building inspector went to the property and “noticed that it had a new heating and air units installed on the roof,” the affidavit said.

When the building inspector approached the front door, “he detected a strong odor of marijuana emitting from the property,” the affidavit said, and the windows “had been tinted pitch black.”

Pitcher, 35, was listed as the warehouse’s owner. The warehouse was listed as vacant, the affidavit said.

Deputies served the search warrant earlier this month and found 1,266 marijuana plants. PG&E estimated that it had lost about $26,000 because its meter had been bypassed.

Yuba County prosecutors charged Pitcher with theft of utility services and two drug counts.

In the earlier federal drug case, Pitcher pleaded guilty to six counts: conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and 500 grams or more of cocaine, two counts of distribution of oxycodone and aiding and abetting, and three counts of distribution of cocaine, and aiding and abetting.

Pitcher, who was arrested in 2005, was given credit for time served and placed on three years supervised release.

In a 2008 court filing, Pitcher’s attorney, Anthony Cardinale, said his client “is not a professional drug trafficker. Rather, he was ... a naïve, highly manipulated, low-paid courier, and whatever other activity he engaged in was to keep himself supplied with a highly addictive controlled substance.”

Prior to his arrest, Pitcher “had been using cocaine, ecstasy, and, unfortunately, oxycontin on a regular basis,” Cardinale wrote.

After the arrest, the attorney wrote, Pitcher became drug free, moved to the Bay Area and “matured into a hardworking, positive urban success story – a long, long way from the groundless and easily led drug abuser/courier he was in Salem in the spring of 2005.”