3 ‘Lancaster Grannies’ Convicted in Iodine Sales

After a 12-day criminal trial and four days of deliberations, a jury on Friday found the “Lancaster Grannies” guilty of failing to properly record sales of iodine crystals at their 40-year-old feed store in the Antelope Valley.

Armitta Mae Granicy, 60; Dorothy Jean Manning, 67; and Ramona Ann Beck, 62, who are sisters, are the first to be tried under a 1998 state law requiring merchants to keep detailed records on buyers of iodine crystals, used to treat hoof disease in horses and to make methamphetamine.

The Lancaster jury also found Manning guilty on one count of selling more than 8 ounces of iodine crystals to a person in a 30-day period.

The sisters, who last month refused a deal that would have kept them out of jail, are scheduled to be sentenced May 31 by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David Mintz. They face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for each misdemeanor offense.

Jurors acquitted the fourth defendant, Robert Roy Granicy, 63, Armitta’s husband. The two own and operate Granicy’s Valley Wide Feed in the Antelope Valley.

Speaking for her family, Armitta Granicy on Friday credited jurors, calling them “more than fair” but said the judge left them “nowhere to go but guilty.”

“He did away with all our defenses,” she said. “We could not defend ourselves.”

Granicy said she and her family do not regret rejecting the prosecution’s deal, which would have required them to stop selling the iodine crystals.

“We would not change it now,” she said. “Never. We’re not sorry.

“From the beginning, we put ourselves in the Lord’s hands and we have no intention of taking it out of his hands,” Granicy said. “We will appeal. And we will win.”

Prosecutor Robert Sherwood said the law mandating that sales be recorded is intended to make it more difficult to manufacture methamphetamine.

“If we can get store owners to comply with the law, we can make a difference,” he said.

“We are not targeting little old ladies,” Sherwood said. “This is serious business. Methamphetamine is a real problem out here.”

He said the women were warned by police before they were charged with the crimes. “They flat-out refused to follow the law,” he said, “and left us no choice.

But defense lawyers said they plan to challenge the verdicts.

“These are good people who have been treated unfairly by the judicial system,” said Alison Bloom, the Granicys’ attorney.

She said she will challenge the law’s constitutionality as well as key rulings by the judge that she said limited her clients’ defenses.

“We will not rest until this travesty of justice is overturned,” said Robert Sheahen, who represented Beck and Manning. “They felt they had been denied a fair trial.”