How has the legalization of hemp accidentally helped marijuana suspects

On a Friday night in April 2018, late at night, Donte Chazz Williams drove from his home in southeast Houston to his girlfriend just outside the city. One block from his home, he crossed a stop sign, drawing the attention of a deputy sheriff of Fort Bend County.

The member brought him in and said that he smelled the pot. Williams said he had some in the car and, of course, the deputy minister found a small bag in the center console, according to police reports, Williams and his lawyer. The MP arrested Williams and sent him to the local jail for possession of 2 grams of marijuana.

Williams, aged 22, paid a bond the following day, but the drug – related case lasted more than a year while his lawyer and he had negotiated his enrollment in a drug – related program. drug education. He did not finish the course, so when he appeared before a judge two weeks ago, he was afraid to send him back to jail.

Instead, prosecutors dropped the case, saying that they could no longer prove that the jar was a jar.

"It's crazy," Williams recalls. "In fact, I was upset."

Williams thanked his lawyer. But he could also quote federal and federal lawmakers who, anxious to increase their production of industrial hemp in America, made it unintentionally more difficult for law enforcement to sue people who own marijuana.

With the adoption of new hemp legalization laws over the last eight months, the country's criminal laboratories suddenly found it impossible to prove that a green-leafed plant taken from a car was marijuana rather than only hemp. Marijuana looks and smells like hemp, but has more THC, the chemical that makes people bred.

Without the technology to determine a plant's THC level, laboratories can not provide scientific evidence that can be used in court. Without this help, prosecutors must send evidence to expensive private laboratories that are able to test or defer procedures until local laboratories develop their own tests, a process that could take months.

Rather than face prohibitive costs or prolonged delays, prosecutors in several states, including Texas, Florida, and Ohio, are either abandoning all minor criminal cases altogether or refusing to create them. news. The police of these states no longer know whether its historical pretext for rummaging cars – the smell of the pot – is still valid. Some people have been told not to make any arrests for possession of marijuana, although they can issue tickets and confiscate the alleged drugs for further testing.

There is no way to determine how many cases have been jeopardized by the new laws, but there are several hundred, if not thousands, say law enforcement officials.

"It's a national problem," said Duffie Stone, president of the National District Attorneys Association and attorney in South Carolina, where unresolved marijuana cases are piling up as criminal labs scramble to get supplies. equipment to perform the new tests. "This problem will exist in just about every state you speak with."

With the increased efforts to decriminalize marijuana, these unintended consequences have simplified the lives of American smokers, particularly in states that have not passed legislation making legal possession of small amounts of weeds legal. Some observers have described hemp laws as de facto decriminalization, although legislators insist that this is not the case.

The confusion around hemp stems from the 2018 Farm Bill, passed by Congress last December, which made hemp a legal crop for the production of textiles, fabrics, paper, food and animal products. health based on cannabidiol, a non-intoxicant extract known as the CBD. In order to distinguish hemp from marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law, Congress defined hemp as containing less than 0.3% THC. The Farm Bill left the States leeway to legislate for the cultivation of hemp; According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 47 states have already done so. Most of these states have adopted the standard of 0.3%.

The criminal laboratories were not prepared for the impact.

Before hemp was legalized, all labs generally had to run a series of relatively inexpensive and quick tests that showed if anything was coming from a cannabis plant. They had the means to test the presence of THC, but did not usually need it.

Many will now have to buy new test equipment, hire more staff, train them in new test methods, and get approval for methods for use in court. Some say that they are in weeks; others say they will not be able to test regularly until next year. Some laboratories also expect a significant increase in their workload. And this only applies to herbal marijuana crates, not edible oils and vaping oils. Laboratory officials in Texas estimated that the total cost could exceed $ 10 million. Private labs charge between $ 200 and $ 600 per test.

In Tennessee, the state's investigative bureau has called on prosecutors to be selective in the cases they choose to prosecute and not to submit evidence of criminal criminal cases until the laboratories have to the point of new testing procedures, said David Rausch, director of the office. In Ohio, Attorney General Dave Yost announced the creation of a $ 50,000 fund to cover the costs of sending evidence by the police to private labs. Several counties in Georgia have said they have stopped prosecuting marijuana offenses. In Florida, prosecutors of at least four court cases have told police they will not be filing marijuana cases without a lab test.

"If you want to have a hemp industry, there is no way to solve this problem," said Phil Archer, the attorney general of Florida's 18th judicial circuit. He added that he had not filed a marijuana complaint since the hemp law came into effect in Florida on July 1. "I would say the majority of circuits treat it the same way."

Mitch Stone, president of the Florida Defense Counsel Association, said he used the new test requirement to successfully challenge searches and arrests, and that he only had little reaction. "Defense lawyers do not want to be dragged into court by defense lawyers to defend a case where they can not prove that their decisions were legal," Stone said.

Peter Stout, president of the Houston Forensic Science Center in Texas, said his agency had hundreds of cases of feline-grade marijuana waiting for tests that may not be available for several months. Until then, local prosecutor, Kim Ogg, Harris County Attorney, said that she would not accept criminal charges for possession of less than 4 ounces of marijuana, but that she was not allowed to be charged. she would consider pursuing more serious business.

"Everyone is fighting here," said Stout.

Some law enforcement officials have advanced in marijuana cases, tackle charges or other workarounds. This is the way that Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has accused prosecutors of misinterpreting the new hemp law. In a letter to state attorneys last month, Abbott said they did not need to be tested in each case of marijuana and could instead blame someone for not having a certificate certifying that she was authorized to carry hemp.

Prosecutors, however, were not satisfied.

In Fort Bend County, District Attorney Brian Middleton said prosecutors needed tests for all cases, even for violations of the hemp certificate provision.

Middleton also said that he had decided to file some outstanding marijuana cases in order to avoid lengthy delays. "Under the circumstances, we concluded that it was unfair and unethical to extend these particular cases," Middleton said in a statement.

He could have talked about Donte Chazz Williams.

At the time of the coming into force of the hemp law in Texas, on June 10, Williams' case was dated more than a year and was delayed by routine matters: postponement of hearings, slow evidence gathering process, and Williams' attempts to get into a program that allowed defendants to see their charges withdrawn in exchange for a drug education course. Meanwhile, said Williams, he lost his job as a forklift driver and was unable to pay the course fees.

He planned to cancel on August 6 because he feared being sent back to prison. He assumed that he would end up being sentenced to several months of probation.

Williams knew nothing of the confusion surrounding the hemp law until he arrived at the courthouse and his lawyer, Vik Vij, gave him a copy of the prosecutors' request for the rejection of the charges.

"The required laboratory tests are not available at the moment," wrote a prosecutor on the margin. (Although the new hemp law does not say whether it was retroactive, prosecutors in Fort Bend and other parts of Texas treat it as if it were.)

Prosecutors may file a new complaint once the tests are available, a Middleton spokesman said.

But Williams said he was happy to have another chance.

"I feel really lucky," he said. "Now I have nothing to do except go get me a job."