As many people are aware, marijuana laws have changed in some states over the last several years. Some states have realized how ridiculously wasteful, counter-productive and just plain stupid it is to give people criminal records and put them in jail for possessing and using a plant, and then ask…
The Constitutional right to privacy prevents the police from entering a person’s home to search for drugs or other evidence except in certain circumstances. If the police have a valid search warrant or someone with authorization gives the police consent to enter and search the house, that is one thing,…
Normally in Florida, the police can only search a person if he/she has committed a crime, the police have consent to search or the police have specific, reliable evidence that the person is in possession of evidence of a crime such as drugs or a gun. However, there are circumstances…
In a recent trafficking in cannabis/marijuana case in South Florida, the police received an anonymous tip that a house was being used to grow marijuana plants. The police went to the suspected marijuana grow house to investigate further. It is clear that the police cannot search a house based on…
We have said several times how dumb and counterproductive it is to have legislators in Tallahassee, for Florida state cases, and Washington D.C., for federal cases, to make laws requiring a minimum amount of prison time for cases about which they know nothing. Yet, there are mandatory minimum penalties for…
In its never ending effort to increase the size of government and continue the famously unsuccessful war on drugs, the Florida legislature is considering enacting a law that would make it a first degree misdemeanor to sell certain items commonly used to smoke marijuana. These would include certain pipes and…
As we have discussed on here several times, the federal government finally got around to reducing (not eliminating) the huge disparity between sentences for powder cocaine crimes and crack cocaine crimes. Under the old law, which was in effect for a long time, the difference between prison sentences for crack…
We try to monitor news about the monumentally inept war on drugs, changing drug laws and general attitudes about drugs and drug crimes both in the Jacksonville, Florida area and throughout the country. From a political standpoint, if one identifies being responsible and efficient with money and limiting the size…
Can the police detain a person just because he/she ran from the police? Of course, if the police had a legitimate basis to tell the person to stop and the person ran, then the police would have a legal basis to catch and detain the person. That would require specific…
A marijuana case was recently dismissed after the police illegally came onto the defendant’s property and looked into his window and saw marijuana plants. This case near Jacksonville, Florida, started the same way many drug cases do when the police come on to a suspect’s property looking for drugs they…