COURT RULING HELPS PROTECT DRUG DEALERS

Chalk it up to the Law of Unintended Consequence.

Massachusetts voters approved a ballot question back in 2008 that made
possession of less than an ounce of marijuana a civil, rather than a
criminal offense. Most people who voted in favor of the question did
so because they believed that young people should not have to carry
around for the rest of their days a criminal record for possession of
marijuana for their own use. It seemed reasonable at the time.

Then along came Benjamin Cruz, who was ordered from a parked car when
police saw it was parked in front of a fire hydrant and smelled
marijuana smoke. When a police officer asked Cruz if he was carrying
drugs or contraband, he admitted that he was in possession of crack
cocaine, and police charged him with possession with intent to
distribute and possession within a school zone. The state's highest
court upheld a lower court's ruling that Cruz's admission that he was
in possession of crack cocaine should be thrown out because Cruz never
should have been pulled from the car in the first place. Why? Because
police could not have known whether or not Cruz had more than an ounce
and, therefore, did not have probable cause to suspect a criminal,
rather than a civil act was being committed.

The ruling's unintended consequence, of course, is that the Supreme
Judicial Court has made it entirely likely than any serious drug
dealer carrying crack, heroin or prescription drugs now knows that all
he or she has to do is to make sure that the smell of marijuana is
leaking from his car or apartment, thereby all but guaranteeing that
police will lack probable cause to conduct a search.

Nobody who voted back in 2008 for the decriminalization question
intended that it provide drug dealers with yet another way to avoid
arrest and prosecution, but that is what the question threatens to do
now that the high court has ruled.