OSWEGO TEACHER TO HAVE MARIJUANA CHARGE DISMISSED IN CITY COURT

OSWEGO -- According to court documents obtained by The Palladium-Times, the
case against an Oswego High School teacher charged with selling marijuana
to a student will be dismissed Thursday.

Angela Ferlito, a business teacher at the school, was arrested on March 18
after finding a clear plastic bag containing 1.3 grams of marijuana on the
floor and handing it to a student.

The court documents show that Ferlito's attorney, James Eby, is asking for
a dismissal based on Public Health Law Section 3305 which specifically
exempts from criminal liability "temporary incidental possession ... by
persons whose possession is for the purpose of aiding public officers in
performing their official duties."

In a letter to Oswego City Court Judge James Metcalf, District Attorney
Dennis Hawthorne Sr. said "the People have decided not to oppose the Motion
to Dismiss."

Ferlito's court date is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Thursday.

In a sworn statement, Ferlito said she saw the bag on the floor following
an after-school meeting and picked it up and put it in her pocket because
she didn't want the young kids in the room to see it.

Ferlito maintains in the statement that two female students re-entered the
room and one of them told her that the bag "belongs to my sister. I am
wearing her vest and it fell out of her pocket and she is going to kill me."

According to her statement, Ferlito then handed the bag to the student.
After dropping her daughter off at a friend's house, she went back to the
high school and reported the incident.

"I don't know what I was thinking of when I handed it to her. I just did
not want anything to do with it and I panicked," Ferlito said in her statement.

Oswego Police detective John Smegelsky said in a signed document that
Ferlito "did knowingly and unlawfully sell without consideration one or
more preparations, compounds, mixtures or substances containing marihuana ... "

Eby also argued in his petition for dismissal that Ferlito "is not a drug
pusher, that she did not bring the baggie and contents to the school, that
she had temporary incidental possession of the baggie, that she restored it
to its owner, and immediately reported the incident to the proper school
authorities."

Eby also pointed out that the law requires that the person must knowingly
and unlawfully sell the marijuana. He further argued that Ferlito was
aiding public officials in performing their duties and that she could not
have known that the act of restoring the baggie to the owner could be a
criminal offense.

There was no further information available at presstime, and the
consequences sustained by the student who allegedly possessed the marijuana
are unknown.