PARIS – A state Senate candidate from Hartford, who is accused of felony cultivation and trafficking in marijuana, is seeking to have her case dismissed this week.

South Paris lawyer David Q. Whittier has filed a motion to suppress the charges against his client, Julia Justine St. James.

That motion is scheduled to be heard Wednesday, Oct. 6, in Oxford County Superior Court in Paris.

St. James, 44, is currently campaigning for the District 14 Maine Senate seat as a member of the Fourth Branch party.

Her opponents are incumbent Sen. Bruce S. Bryant, D-Dixfield, and Robert A. Cameron, R-Rumford.

St. James said Wednesday that the Fourth Branch is a new political party in Maine that is based on the fourth branch of the government: the people.

St. James was arrested Feb. 27 by Oxford County deputies who had a warrant to search her two-story home on Mountain View Drive.

She was charged with two felonies – aggravated trafficking in marijuana and aggravated cultivation of marijuana – after deputies, drug enforcement agents and state troopers seized more than 175 pot plants found growing in a greenhouse on her property.

Additionally, police seized what they estimated to be more than three pounds of processed marijuana ready for distribution, $715 cash, an unloaded 12-gauge shotgun, and a .44-caliber Magnum revolver, which police said was loaded with six bullets and one in the chamber.

On March 18, an Oxford County grand jury indicted St. James on the two drug charges, one count of criminal forfeiture in connection with the two firearms, and a count of criminal forfeiture in connection with the seized cash.

At her arraignment on April 9, St. James pleaded innocent. She has been free on $10,000 cash bail.

A Superior Court jury trial has been scheduled for December should Whittier’s motion to suppress be denied next week.

Investigating Deputy Chancey Libby said he received a call on Jan. 9 from an Ohio employee of WeTip Inc. WeTip Inc. is a California-based nonprofit company to which anonymous tips about criminal activity in the United States are reported.

Libby said it was the first time that Oxford County police had received a tip about criminal activity from the Internet.

Before the Feb. 27 arrest, St. James had been convicted of a misdemeanor charge of marijuana cultivation, and ordered to pay a $400 fine after police responded to a July 28, 2002, domestic disturbance complaint.