ARTIFICIAL BUST

The Drug Law That Wasn't There

CHARGED WITH POSSESSION of drug paraphernalia, 15-year-old Joshua Krawiec
won a dismissal by proving that the law he was accused of breaking didn't
exist.

In October a police dog sniffed out three film canisters in Krawiec's locker
at Newport High School in northeastern Washington state. A field test
indicated "marijuana residue" in one of the containers. Lab analysis later
confirmed the presence of pot, but the residue detected was insufficient to
charge Krawiec with drug possession. Undaunted, local prosecutors decided to
indict him for possession of drug paraphernalia.

Krawiec, who said he had no knowledge of any contraband that might have been
in the canisters, tried unsuccessfully to get the charge dismissed based on
a drug test he passed a few days after the search. Then he turned to
Citizens Against Corruption, a local grassroots legal organization. With the
assistance of CAC founder Leonard Browning, Krawiec used the Internet to
research the law he was charged with breaking as well as several relevant
court cases.

He discovered that Washington law forbids the use of paraphernalia for
producing, storing, or ingesting illegal drugs. As stated explicitly in the
1998 case Washington v. McKenna, however; "mere possession of drug
paraphernalia is not a crime."

After firing his public defender, who seemed to have little interest in
mounting a defense, Krawiec himself presented his findings to the court. In
January, Superior Court Judge Rebecca Baker reluctantly ordered the case
dismissed.

Krawiec, who maintains that he was maliciously and illegally prosecuted
without probable cause, got a final slap from Baker. "Don't laugh when you
leave this courtroom, thinking you have beat the system because you looked
these things up yourself," she said. "We are going to get you down the
road."