Date is set for sentencing

SANDPOINT — Sentencing hearings are pending for two Kootenai residents who entered pleas to cultivating marijuana on conservancy land near Northside Elementary School.

Marcum Shelton Starks pleaded guilty to amended charge of trafficking marijuana and a charge of manufacturing a controlled substance. He is scheduled to be sentenced on April 19 in 1st District Court.

Starks’ alleged accomplice, Laura Dell Baker, entered an Alford plea to an amended trafficking charge. Baker admits no wrongdoing under such a plea, but concedes there is enough evidence to obtain a conviction.

Baker’s plea will be treated no differently than a plea of guilt when she is sentenced on May 2.

The state is recommending concurrent prison terms of two to five years in Starks’ case and a two- to five-year term in Baker’s case, court records show. Baker’s defense counsel, Michael Waldrup, is free to recommend a lesser sentence, as is Starks’ counsel, Bryce Powell.

The pair was arrested last October after Bonner County Sheriff’s investigators discovered the growing operation on Clark Fork-Pend Oreille Conservancy land along the Pack River. Authorities said as much as 30 pounds of pot was recovered in the takedown.

Both Starks, 42, and Baker, 51, were offered pretrial settlement agreements to resolve their respective cases.

Starks was originally charged with possessing more than 25 pounds of marijuana, but the trafficking charge was amended to possession of more than 1 pound but fewer than 5 pounds. The trafficking charge in Baker’s case was likewise amended.