WEST CHESTER >> Possession of peanut brittle and pralines normally is not the kind of activity that gets you hauled before a judge, facing criminal charges. But for a 61-year-old transplanted grandmother from Oregon, the ingredient she apparently added to those confections earned her not only a visit to Common Pleas Court, but a two-year commitment to court supervision and a felony record.
Barbara Beetem, now of Lancaster, pleaded guilty to charges of possession with intent to deliver marijuana on Monday before Judge Phyllis Streitel. The prosecutor in the case said that East Pikeland police found about nine pounds of marijuana in her rented room after being alerted to the scent of marijuana by Beetem’s landlord.
“This was not just for her own personal use,” Assistant District Attorney Andrea Cardamone told Streitel during the brief proceeding, at which Streitel accepted Beetem’s guilty plea and imposed the agreed upon sentence. “She was either sharing or selling” the marijuana.
Cardamone said township police found not only the normal ground up, leafy marijuana, but also hashish and marijuana oil in the room. She said the oil was used to lace the peanut brittle candy and pralines confection.
Thomas Logan of Doylestown, Beetem’s attorney, told Streitel that his client had recently moved to Pennsylvania from Oregon, where she had a medical marijuana license that allowed her to have marijuana in her home. “But you understand that is not legal in Pennsylvania,” he asked his client, who agreed that she knew she was breaking the law.
“I knew this was wrong,” Beetem, her grey hair pulled back in a bun, wearing glasses and a black patterned pants suit, told the judge while entering her plea. “I should not have had it. And I won’t ever do it again, where it is illegal.” She said she was the grandmother of five “beautiful and exceptional” children, and had never been in trouble with the law before in her life.
The two years’ probation that Beetem received as part of the plea agreement is within the standards sentencing guidelines for someone in her position. However, she will not be allowed to use marijuana for any reason while she is on probation, and will be tested for drug use for the subsequent 24 months.
According to a criminal complaint filed in the case by East PIkeland Officer Daniel Corbo, he was called to a home in the 600 block of Schuylkill Road around 10:30 a.m. on Nov. 22. There, he met the landlord, Patrick Murphy, who told him that he had rented a room to Beetem earlier that month. In doing so, he specifically informed her that no drug use was allowed in the house.
Murphy said that the day before, he had walked by Beetem’s room and smiled a heavy odor of marijuana. He waited for Beetem to leave in the morning, and entered the room to find tote bags containing marijuana, psychedelic mushrooms, and what appeared to be tablets of LSD. Corbo obtained a search warrant, and later went into the room himself.
There, in addition to marijuana, hash, and hash oil, he found what he called hash taffy and other candy manufacturing items.
Beetem was arrested on Nov. 28. She has been free on bail pending her trial.
