A Canaan man avoided additional jail time Thursday after pleading guilty to operating an illegal cannabis grow house. Jian J. Wu, 66, was sentenced to 120 days in jail, which he had already served following his arrest in 2024.
Under an agreement with prosecutors, Wu was also ordered to pay a $6,000 fine. His son had previously posted $3,000 bail, which will be applied toward that fine.
A lien will be placed on his property to secure payment.
Wu pleaded guilty to one Class B count of marijuana cultivation. In exchange, Somerset County prosecutors dismissed two Class B counts of unlawful trafficking in scheduled drugs.
Wu also agreed to forfeit $1,000 cash and a 2019 Dodge Caravan that investigators seized when he was arrested in May 2024.
Somerset County Sheriff’s Office investigators executed a search warrant in May 2024 at Wu’s property at 14 Hinckley Road in Canaan, Assistant District Attorney Evan Toothaker said. Nobody was home at the time, but investigators found a suitcase containing Wu’s tax forms and identification cards.
Investigators found and seized 859 marijuana plants and 26 pounds of processed marijuana, Toothaker said. The next day, officers located Wu and arrested him outside Walgreens on North Avenue in Skowhegan.
A few weeks later, investigators executed another search warrant on Wu’s seized van. The rear seats had been removed, and investigators found marijuana leaves, potting soil, and credit cards belonging to Wu.
They also found and seized $1,000 cash that was in the floorboard. Superior Court Chief Justice Robert E. Mullen accepted the plea deal during a hearing at Somerset County Superior Court.
The hearing lasted several hours because Wu was assisted by a Cantonese-English interpreter. When a miscommunication arose about the terms of the agreed-upon fine, Mullen halted the proceeding and summoned the attorneys to his chambers to sort out the issue.
Mullen said the sentence was appropriate given the sentencing factors outlined in state law. “Undoubtedly, there may be some people who disagree with this sentence,” the judge said.
Wu’s case was one of 16 criminal matters filed in Somerset County during the crackdown on illegal grow houses in rural Maine. The raids, many of which were in Somerset County, began in early 2024 and continued into 2025.
Earlier in the case, Mullen ruled Wu’s constitutional rights were violated when Detective David Cole of the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office subjected him to custodial interrogation without informing him of his Miranda rights. Wu’s answers about whether he was growing marijuana were deemed inadmissible at trial.
Many of the Somerset County cases had lingered on the court’s docket for close to two years, partly because of difficulty finding Cantonese-English interpreters. This spring, courts called in interpreters from out of state to conduct a series of hearings in the pending cases.
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