A former Hawaii island real estate salesman facing a five- to 40-year prison term for growing and conspiring to manufacture and possess 549 marijuana plants was instead sentenced Monday to a one-year term.
Thomas A. Sullivan Jr., 62, who pleaded guilty in February, qualified for the shorter term in large part because he has no criminal record.
U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway added a day to the one-year term to make Sullivan eligible for early release for good behavior. Defendants sentenced to one year or less do not qualify for early release.
He was living with a friend in August 2011 when Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided the friend’s property in Honokaa.
In addition to the 549 plants, federal prosecutor Jonathan Loo said the DEA also seized 24 bags of processed marijuana on the 5-acre parcel, suggesting that the growers had already completed one harvest.
Sullivan told court officials that he moved in with his friend because he was out of work and had spent all of the money in the trust fund his father and grandfather had set up for him.
His lawyer, Shanlyn Park, told Mollway that Sullivan’s family had also cut him off.
In exchange for a place to live, Sullivan did handy work, watered and took care of the marijuana plants.
Since his arrest in 2011, Sullivan says friends on the Big Island have been helping him with his living expenses in exchange for handy work.
Loo said Sullivan is not a typical defendant, having attended a California prep school, Menlo College and the University of California, Berkeley.
Sullivan told Mollway he regrets the "cascade of horrible decisions" he made and accepts total responsibility for what he did.
The friend and owner of the property, former real estate broker David V. Huggett, is scheduled for sentencing next month.
