In a ruling hailed as landmark by rights advocates, the Vermont Supreme Court last week decided unanimously in favor of an African American motorist who challenged a 2014 stop by a state trooper as unlawful and racially motivated. The ruling found the police may be held liable for the improper search \u2014 which was carried out with the justification that the officer smelled cannabis.<\/p>\n
The ruling is being celebrated by the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which represented motorist Gregory Zullo in the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolice have had enormous discretion to stop and search motorists, including for erroneous or pretextual reasons and on the basis of implicit or explicit bias,\u201d Lia Ernst, the\u00a0Vermont ACLU<\/a>\u00a0attorney who argued the case, told the state\u2019s alternative weekly\u00a0Seven Days<\/a>. \u201cIn ruling that police can be liable for such acts, this decision sends a clear message \u2014 no one is above the law, and if police make bad stops, they can and will be held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the judges in this Vermont case came to a different decision that Kansas Supreme Court judges made a month ago when they ruled the smell of cannabis\u00a0could<\/i>\u00a0be probable cause for a search. U.S. Supreme Court rulings have also been split in the past, so the legality remains fuzzy.<\/p>\n In the Vermont case, then-state trooper Lewis Hatch said he pulled Zullo over in Wallingford, Rutland County, because snow was covering the registration sticker on his license plate. Hatch claimed he detected a \u201cfaint\u201d smell<\/a> of cannabis, and on that basis had the car towed and searched. The search turned up a small pipe with cannabis residue \u2014 but no evidence of a criminal offense. Zullo was not charged, but had to pay $150 to recover his vehicle.<\/p>\n Vermont Department of Public Safety documents submitted in the case\u00a0indicate<\/a>\u00a0that Hatch had a history of conducting drug searches without legal justification \u2014 and often targeted black men. But the Vermont Attorney General\u2019s Office backed Hatch in the case.<\/p>\n The Jan. 4 state Supreme Court ruling found that the \u201cfaint\u201d smell of cannabis was not enough to justify search and seizure of the vehicle. The case was sent back to the lower court in Rutland, where the ACLU can now argue that Hatch acted in \u201cbad faith,\u201d and that the stop was racially motivated.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m really excited that we are making a difference here,\u201d Zullo told the local\u00a0Valley News<\/a>\u00a0after the high court ruling. \u201cI didn\u2019t think it was going to be in favor; I\u2019m glad I was wrong\u2026 Now I feel like a big weight has been lifted off my shoulders.\u201d<\/p>\n He quickly added, \u201cBut we\u2019re not done yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Alas, almost exactly a month earlier, a divided Kansas Supreme Court upheld a cannabis conviction in a case that similarly relied on supposed olfactory evidence to justify a search. Worse, this case set the precedent that police can now search private homes based upon the smell of cannabis \u2014 whereas before the accepted police practice in Kansas was that the scent of pot could justify the search of a vehicle.<\/p>\n In the ruling, the Kansas court determined that Douglas County resident Lawrence Hubbard\u2019s misdemeanor conviction would stand. As\u00a0the\u00a0Topeka Capital-Journal<\/a>\u00a0reports, Hubbard was found guilty of possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia after police searched his home, which led to a term of probation.<\/p>\n The case began when a police officer followed Hubbard home, mistaking him for someone with an outstanding arrest warrant. But as they cleared up the misunderstanding at his front door, the officer allegedly detected the smell of cannabis, and carried out a \u201csecurity sweep\u201d of the apartment on the spot \u2014 allegedly, to assure that no evidence was being destroyed. This turned up a roach and bongs, which were then used to justify obtaining a warrant for a more complete search. The subsequent search uncovered 25 grams stored in a closed Tupperware container locked inside a safe in Hubbard\u2019s bedroom closet.<\/p>\n The closet holding the safe was an estimated 30 feet from where the officer supposedly first detected the incriminating aroma, according to Jim Rumsey, the Lawrence attorney representing Hubbard.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom 30 feet away we\u2019re supposed to believe she can smell raw marijuana?\u201d Rumsey asked rhetorically. \u201cI\u2019d suggest no reasonable person could do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Because two state supreme courts have issued conflicting decisions in this matter, it may ultimately fall to the federal Supreme Court to issue a definitive ruling. Precedent from the nation\u2019s top court in related cases is decidedly mixed.<\/p>\n In an April 2014 decision\u00a0in\u00a0Navarette v. California<\/a>,\u00a0<\/i>the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a traffic stop that led to a marijuana arrest was constitutional because police had reasonable suspicion the driver was intoxicated.<\/p>\n That ruling stemmed from a 2008 incident in which California Highway Patrol officers stopped Lorenzo Prado Navarette\u2019s pickup truck on a Mendocino County road based on a 911 tip about reckless driving \u2014 and said they smelled cannabis when approaching the vehicle. They conducted a search, and found 30 pounds. Navarette and a passenger were arrested and charged. At trial, they moved to suppress the evidence on grounds that the search violated their Fourth Amendment rights because the officers lacked reasonable suspicion when they pulled Navarette over.<\/p>\n But in the opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the majority found that while an anonymous tip will not always lead to reasonable suspicion, in this case it did.<\/p>\n On the other hand, in March 2013 the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in\u00a0Florida v. Jardines<\/i><\/a>\u00a0that evidence from a search warrant obtained on the basis of a drug-sniffing dog alerting to a home from the outside was inadmissible. Charges were dropped against Joelis Jardines, whose Miami indoor grow operation was uncovered in the search.<\/p>\n A worrisome consideration, however, is that the balance on the Supreme Court has shifted since these decisions \u2014 and in a more conservative direction.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/b>\u00a0do you think the smell of cannabis should be probable cause?<\/p>\n The post Courts Disagree If Cannabis Smell Justifies Search and Seizure<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In a ruling hailed as landmark by rights advocates, the Vermont Supreme Court last week decided unanimously in favor of an African American motorist who challenged a 2014 stop by a state trooper as unlawful and racially motivated. The ruling found the police may be held liable for the improperContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6415,50,6745,3246,6755,90,1593,7030,27,7031],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32032"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32032"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32033,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32032\/revisions\/32033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Good News from the Green Mountain State<\/h4>\n
But What\u2019s the Matter with Kansas?<\/h4>\n
SCOTUS Precedent Divided<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Courts Disagree If Cannabis Smell Justifies Search and Seizure<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"