MONTPELIER, Vt. – Late one afternoon last December, a 1995 Cadillac Deville driven by Real Gagnon, a Canadian citizen living in Wales, Maine, pulled up to the tiny border crossing in Beecher Falls, Vt., court records say.

A Customs and Border Protection agent told Gagnon to pull over so his car could be searched. A U.S. Border Patrol agent was called and a drug-sniffing dog checked the car.

The dog smelled something and a search by agents turned up 3 1/2 pounds of marijuana under the rear seat.

The federal agents then called the Vermont State Police, who arrested Gagnon. The case, caught at the border and discovered by federal agents, was now a state case.

“The public perception is the feds are cracking down hard on the illegal importation of drugs into this country,” said Vincent Illuzzi, the part-time Essex County state’s attorney who prosecuted Gagnon. “In reality they are getting all the credit and the states are getting all the work.”

It’s an issue confronting state prosecutors all along the border with Quebec and elsewhere. Prosecutors are devoting scarce state resources to prosecute what some say are federal crimes. The issue is frustrating judges, too.

In a December 2003, after a hung jury, Vermont District Court Judge Michael Kupersmith dismissed drug charges against a man caught at the border in Franklin County with 10 pounds of marijuana. Kupersmith said the state couldn’t afford to do the work of the federal government.

“This court has dutifully expended its resources entertaining the federal case,” Kupersmith wrote after the one-day jury trial.

Franklin County prosecutors handle an average of almost 33 cases a month while federal prosecutors handle an average of a little more than one case a month, he wrote.

“It is clear that the federal government has far greater prosecutorial and judicial resources to devote to the prosecution of crime than does the state of Vermont and that, by contrast, the state criminal caseload is far greater,” he wrote. “The court is confident that the office of the United States Attorney has sufficient resources to … prosecute this federal offense. The state has done its part.”

To be sure, Vermont’s U.S. Attorney’s office is prosecuting a lot of drug cases from the border. Thanks in part to increased security after the 2001 attacks on the United States, the number of seizures is up and federal prosecutors are throwing the federal government’s weight against big-time smugglers.

Vermont’s U.S. Attorney, David Kirby, said he sympathized with the state’s border prosecutors, but said his office had its limitations, too, and Kupersmith was wrong.

“We have only so many resources to deal with them,” Kirby said. “We have to make decisions between the three-and-a-half pound person or trying to get the organizers up in Canada of the marijuana trade.”

His office might prosecute fewer cases than the county prosecutors, but most were far more complicated than the state cases, he said. And drug crimes violate state law as well.

Kirby said there were guidelines about the sizes of the seizures needed to trigger a federal prosecution, but he wouldn’t say what they were.

“We do not have any hard and fast rules,” Kirby said. “We review every case on a case-by-case basis.”

Illuzzi represents Essex County, Vermont’s least populous. He says about 10 percent of his cases every year are drug cases that originate at the county’s three border crossings with Quebec.

For Illuzzi, the Gagnon case was unusual because it went to trial. Gagnon was convicted after a two-day jury trial in Vermont District Court in Guildhall on Aug. 31 of felony marijuana charges. Illuzzi disposes of most drug cases without going to trial.

“It’s really a federal case,” Illuzzi said, pointing out there were eight federal agents waiting to testify in the Guildhall courthouse during the trial, although not all were called.

Orleans County State’s Attorney Keith Flynn, whose territory includes the Interstate 91 border crossing at Derby Line, said that so far this year his office has had 39 drug cases from the border. His office handles about 800 total cases a year.

“I think it’s important that they be prosecuted. It’s hard to put a label on it, is it drugs passing through or drugs bound for this county?” he said. “There are certainly no free passes to be given at the border.”

Most of the cases involve marijuana, but he’s had other drug cases as well.

At the current level the cases don’t overwhelm Flynn or his deputy. He is due to get another deputy at the end of the month, he said. But the number of border drug cases his office gets is increasing, he said.

“If we keep on getting substantial increases then we may have to ask what sort of burden on our resources that’s creating,” Flynn said. “Right now it’s part of the job and it’s certainly something that needs to be prosecuted.”

Franklin County State’s Attorney Jim Hughes had a similar opinion.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a burden. It just adds to our numbers,” said Hughes.

It’s an issue in other border states, as well. In New York’s Jefferson County, District Attorney Cindy Intschert said after arrests, border authorities start the phone calls. “Typically there’s some communication to try to make a determination which prosecuting agency has the better tools available, based on the facts and circumstances of the particular case,” she said.

Factors include which statutes are more appropriate, the amount of drugs involved and whether a particular case stretches beyond the county. Someone caught at a port of entry with a small drug amount, a misdemeanor possession case, might simply be handled in town court, she said.

Gagnon, the Maine man caught in Beecher Falls, is in jail awaiting sentencing. He’s facing up to five years in prison and then – because he is a Canadian citizen – deportation and he will be barred for life from returning to the United States.

Illuzzi said Gagnon’s attorney had filed the paperwork to request a new trial. The attorney, Michael Hanley, declined to comment on the case.

Illuzzi said if the federal government wants the state to prosecute border cases, then the feds should help out.

“They need to come up with a way to reimburse the state for the impact on the criminal justice system,” he said.