Supreme court upholds man’s drug conviction

PORTLAND – The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Thursday upheld a Caribou man’s conviction for drug trafficking even though police never found any drugs.

Lucien Woo was convicted in June 2006 of unlawful trafficking in methamphetamine. In his appeal, he argued that prosecutors failed to prove that he successfully manufactured the drug.

In a 5-2 decision, Justice Ellen Gorman wrote that although drug agents didn’t find any methamphetamine in the case, there was enough circumstantial evidence to convict Woo.

Prosecutors presented evidence that a friend had shown Woo how to make the drug, that Woo was seen buying large quantities of most of the ingredients and items needed to make the drug, and that his wife smelled a strong odor in their house that could have been methamphetamine.

“All of these pieces of evidence, taken together, would support an inference that Woo was producing, preparing, compounding or processing methamphetamine,” Gorman wrote.

In the dissenting opinion, Justice Donald Alexander wrote that the evidence was too flimsy to warrant a conviction.

“Today the court holds if a person … had some of the ingredients to bake a cake, and someone once gave that person a recipe to bake a cake, then he can be found guilty of baking a cake, although no one saw him bake the cake, and no trace of a cake has ever been found,” Alexander wrote.

After his conviction, Woo was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Woo also was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to a second charge of unlawful trafficking and violating a condition of release after drug agents raided his home while he was awaiting trial on the initial charge.