SoThrowd

Hey I got busted last month for possesion with intent and I been to jail for a week and my dad bails me out. I have smoked some hash last week and my court date is in a week. It is in a very small town with 63 ounces of plant weight roots and all. I just thought of this recently and I am worried as hell if they would ask me if I smoked marijuana. My lawyer has already made a deal with the da to go to prison boot camp for 6 months and get this off my record. But the thing is that I have a shoulder injury that seems to be really bad and soon getting surgery so I think it might be postponed for a later date from what my lawyer said. Would I have to sit in jail till then? Or would I be able to recover at home?

sk3y

Prob at home, because you have been bailed out. Im no legal expert but I would say go home

LiveForMusic1827

I dont see why you would have to wait in jail thats rediculous.....then again try to chill with the weed for awhile the last thing you'd want is another charge....especially since you might be able to save yourself some serious jail time no worse than 6 months.

SoThrowd

Has any one been drug tested by the court system?

troublemaker_42

Ummm....yeah....I'm sure MANY people have. Drug testing is a big part of paroile and/or probation, which is usually under the court's jurisdiction. Anyone who has been on parole or probation for any sort of drug offense has likely been tested by the court system. Its standard procedure

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SoThrowd

I am just on bail for now, not on probation or parole. So considering my condition, do you think they will drug test me or not? I just need a clear answer because I smoked some damn hash and I am paranoid as hell now because I just thought about it.

Neko150

It's not clear what they'll do, probably at the judge's discretion. Considering the situation you deffo shouldn't have smoked - and don't do it again until you're off the hook. Common sense.

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blondie0420

No one can give you a clear and definitive answer as to whether you'll be drug tested. That's going to depend on the individual judge in your case.

I would say the best thing you can do is stop smoking immediately. Since the arrest happened recently, you can claim that any THC in your system is just hanging around from before this all went down. If you fail a first or even a second drug test, you should be fine, so long as the levels of THC in your system are decreasing rather than increasing.

While you may think it sucks to have to stop smoking, just think about how much more it's going to suck when/if you fail a piss test or get caught with more weed and end up spending a signifigant period of time in jail. Then you'll be forced to quit smoking for a while. Since you have the choice to either quit smoking for the time being or be forced to quit in jail, either way you're not smoking so you might as well maintain your freedom.

I agree with CommonSense's suggestion that your lawyer could attempt to argue that the weed was for personal use and that you just found it and picked it, but that's also going to depend on where the weed came from and whether the police have evidence relating to the same. If the cops plucked it out of the garden in the OP's backyard or tore it up from where it was planted in his basement, that's going to be a problem.

The part I don't agree with CommonSense's suggestion (otherwise an awesome couple of posts) concerning the OP's lawyer attempting to reduce the amount of marijuana the OP is charged with possessing based on the notion that the roots, leaves, etc are not smokeable (and therefore, not saleable). In Connecticut, the laws get pretty specific in enumerating all of the different bits and pieces that count as cannabis, including what we would consider unsmokeable parts, and every bit of them count towards the overall weight of what you're charged with possessing/selling. I'm sure most other states have similar stipulations in their laws (you have to go to the "definitions" portion in the beginning of the section). Even if you think a jury wouldn't agree, whether the OP has the time and money to spend on a jury trial is going to have a signifigant impact on how he and his attorney move forward in dealing with this matter. That and he may not want to risk the possibility that the jury doesn't care if he's charged with possession of roots and leaves with his marijuana.

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commonsense

The laws vary. Usually there will be various threshold amounts that increase the classification of the felony. Under ten pounds may be a lower classification of felony, ten to a hundred another, and so on. The question that has to be answered first though is whether the marijuana was possessed with intent to sell it, or whether it was just for personal use. At least in my sate, if by some miracle you convince a jury that you have a hundred pounds for personal use, it would still be misdemeanor possession. A necessary element of the felony crime is that one possess the marijuana with "intent to deliver" it. If you can sufficiently rebut the presumption of intent to deliver, you can beat the felony whether you have two ounces or twenty pounds.

The reason you would want to make the case that only a tiny fraction of the plant would actually end up being usable bud, is to help rebut the presumption that you possessed the pot with intent to deliver it. If you have sixty-three ounces, it's going to be hard to get a jury (or prosecutor) to believe it was for personal use. If you can show the jury that what you had would really only end up being a little more than a quarter pound when you dry it and throw away all the useless parts, the fact that it was only for personal use would be a lot easier to sell. And of course if you could make that case to the prosecutor before trial you might very well be able to work something out where you avoid the risk of going before a jury. If he thinks you had sixty-three ounces of usable pot though he's not going to go for a misdemeanor.

If the jury convicts you for possession with intent to deliver, all of the weight will count against you. That is true. It wouldn't matter in my state because the penalty range for ten pounds is the same as it would be for one ounce. You'd still want to bring up the usable weight issue in the sentencing phase of the trial as a mitigating factor though, because the sentence would likely be worse for several pounds than it would be for just a few ounces of usable product. This is a relevant factor either in the merits phase or the sentencing phase of the trial.

commonsense

Normally one of the conditions of bond is that you not break any laws, which would include smoking weed. None of us can know whether the court will actually drug test you though. That varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and from court to court. You should ask your lawyer about that. If he is well experienced in the particular court system you are talking about he will know if drug tests are common in your situation. In my area, people are rarely ever tested while out on bond. Usually the only way that happens is in a situation where we're trying to get the court to grant a bond or lower the bond and the prosecutor requests drug testing while the person is out. The court will make specific orders with respect to drug testing.

You should probably just leave it alone for now whether you will be tested or not. The last thing you need to do now is get yourself in more trouble. You said you live in a very small town. Now the cops there think you are a pot dealer. Expect to be pulled over and searched. Expect them to be watching you while you are out on bond. Expect them to be talking to your local prosecutors about you.

I am a criminal defense attorney. I have handled literally thousands of pounds worth of pot cases. Much of the work I have done has been in small towns. In my experience often when a defense attorney and prosecutor are working out a deal, the prosecutor will ask the arresting officer if the deal is okay with him. If your lawyer tries to sweeten your deal any, the prosecutor might very talk to the cop first before he makes up his mind. If the cop says he's been seeing you hanging out at drug dealer's houses, riding around with all the local stoners and everything, that won't help you a bit. In really small towns everybody knows everybody and the cops and prosecutors hear things. The best thing you could do now is stay away from trouble makers and people known to be stoners. Keep your nose clean and at least try to give off the appearance of being a good kid who has learned his lesson.

Be very careful about what kind of deal you accept. Every jurisdiction is different. Every prosecutor and judge is different. Often in my area if I have someone with a clean record caught with one or two plants, I can talk the prosecutors into reducing the charge to simple possession, a misdemeanor. That may not be possible in your town, but it's worth a shot. Talk to your parents about coming up with several thousand dollars. Ask your lawyer if the prosecutors will go for a deal where you pay a large fine, and/or an "asset forfeiture" to your local task force in exchange for a misdemeanor. They'd want the fine paid up front because they look good when they collect a lot of money for the county and they hate having to mess with taking payments. The "asset forfeiture" route doesn't work everywhere but in my area drug task forces are all about the money and I've kept a lot of people out of prison by having them come up with several grand as "asset forfeitures." It's sleazy, but perfectly legal. Also, you could offer to perform a ridiculous amount of community service, or to do your six months in the local jail and perform community service while you are there so the sheriff can have another slave. You don't want a felony record, even if it is expunged.

See if your lawyer has tried to educate the prosecutor about the fact that while that plant may have weighed 63 ounces, you would have only gotten a fraction of that in dried buds. Your lawyer might not even know that. The buds will only weigh a small fraction of that total 63 ounces and they'd only weigh about a quarter of that small fraction after they were dried. You would have most likely ended up with way under a pound of dried buds. Defense attorneys don't always know this and prosecutors rarely know anything about growing pot. Since you are in a very small town, your lawyer is quite likely someone who spends most of his time on divorces and contract lawsuits and wills and all sorts of other things and only handles a few criminal cases. He may be a good lawyer but don't expect him to be an expert on marijuana growing or marijuana cases.

You said that you have a boot camp offer and that you can get this off your record. Make sure you know exactly what it means when your lawyer says you can get this off your record. Usually, it doesn't really come off your record. In my jurisdiction, we'll often agree to a provision in the final judgment that says that the defendant can petition to expunge his record after he completes his sentence. If we have a boot camp offer, that might mean that the person is sentenced to five or ten years in prison but bootcamp is recommended. The person will go through the bootcamp program, and then get an early release. He'll be on parole for several years though, and they do drug test you on parole. After he completes parole he can petition to get his record expunged. Expungement is not automatic, and it doesn't really wipe everything clean. The police will still see this record if they ever run your record. Many employers will be able to see it. You still cannot own a firearm unless you are able to secure a pardon at some point in the future. It will not be like none of this ever happened.

In my jurisdiction at least, you would want to try like crazy to avoid a felony conviction even if you will be able to expunge it, even if it means paying thousands of dollars to "buy a better deal" or agreeing to a relatively long stint in the county jail and/or a ridiculous amount of community service work. You could probably get the misdemeanor expunged too and it would be much less likely to hurt you in the future even if you don't get it expunged.

Talk to your lawyer. Make sure he's still trying to get you a misdemeanor if possible. Make sure he explains what he means when he says you'll be able to get this off your record. Make sure you don't get in any more trouble or give the police reasons to suspect that you are being less than a law abiding citizen while you are out on bond.

Good luck.