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TokeToke

Okay so Ive been looking it up on norml.com and it says 20g or less all results in some jail time and a fine. I guess this is because my homestate is a "Mandatory" state.

So that means if I get caught with like a small ammount of weed, a dime or less, I will be going to jail straight away with a fine?

Thankfully the state where my college is 30g or less has no jail time and just a fine...


Any help would be great,
Thanks
TokeToke

 

hauptmann

Telling us where you live would help us out.

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TokeToke

Sorry, my mistake...

Sunshine State Florida...

kriptoker

Yes, you r probly gonna go to jail for the night see the judge in the mornin if it's a 1st or 2 nd offence you will prob get 6 months to 1 year probation loss of licence for 6 months and a fine/court cost for under 20 grams anything over that and well it's pretty much up to the judge and remember FL. is a tough drug state so don't get caught! Also some time last year the supreeme court ruled that mandatory minnimum sentences are only guide lines now so there are no mandatory min. anymore but FL judges are still gonna put you away count on it!

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BartSimpson

umm . . . how do you know this? Jail for the night? One of the greatest disservices we can do for our fellow potheads is dispense bad advice - because it spreads like wildfire to other potheads and causes much unnecessary paranoia. Like the guy who flees and ends up in a pursuit because he fears a night in jail - for a minor amount - when otherwise it might have been the officer's descretion to just "dust unto dust" the whole situation.

I suggest we wait for a better answer, perhaps Phuzz1 or Niteshift will happen by? (Niteshift must be excused briefly due to Hurricane duty, I'm sure.)

 

phuzz01

There are two separate issues, bail and then sentence. I obviously can only talk about my area, but much of this applies anywhere:

The "jail for the night" thing is bail. When you get arrested, bail is set to ensure that you will show up at your arraignment and subsequent hearings. If the court is open when you get arrested, usually one of the clerks of court will set bail. If the court is not open, then the police department will call a bail commissioner to come set bail. Bail is determined by many different things: severity of the offense, whether somebody is in danger of physical harm if you are let out, your track record of appearing in court before, etc.

In the vast majority of marijuana cases here, bail is set at "personal recognizance." This means that you sign a paper promising to appear in court, and as long as you do show up, you never have to put up any money. If, however, you have been arrested before and failed to appear, the bail commissioner might set some amount of cash bail. This means that you have to put up a certain amount of money in order to not go to jail for the night. If you show up at all of your hearings, when the case is adjudicated, you get your bail money back, regardless of whether you are found guilty or not guilty. And finally, if you committ a major violent offense, or you have an extremely long track record of leaving the state and jumping bail, or whatever other aggravating circumstances, they will set a very high cash bail or no bail, and you sit in jail to ensure that you will appear in court. If you do have to sit in jail for whatever reason, you are usually entitled to bail and probable cause hearings when the court next opens.

Like I said, if you are caught with a dime bag and don't have a long history of violent offenses and skipping out on court, you should be receiving personal recognizance or very low cash bail. Harder drugs or selling is a different story. Then they will try to make the case that you are a danger to society. But that's neither here nor there.

Now, for sentence. What NORML puts on their website is the maximum penalty. Technically, in my state, possession of any amount of any controlled drug is a Class A misdemeanor, so if I find one mj seed, you could theoretically get a maximum penalty of one year in the house of corrections and/or a $2,000 fine. However, is that going to happen? Very unlikely. First offense is usually a smaller fine (say, $250), and sometimes some suspended jail time (meaning if you do not get in trouble again for X period of time, you don't end up serving the jail time). Florida appears to be the same way for simple possession. It looks like Florida only starts with the mandatory minimums for sale or cultivation of 25lbs. or more. If that applies to you, well, you are on your own...

So TokeToke, to answer your question, you will not necessarily go to jail for getting caught with marijuana in Florida. What NORML put there is what is the maximum penalty allowed by law. But, what bail and sentence you actually receive are going to depend entirely on the circumstances.

phuzz01

I know we've been through this before, but just to shed some light on that. Here, the state lab is backlogged as much as one year for drug testing. So, that means if I find a pipe with some residue, or a baggie with a very small amount of marijuana in it, and I arrest you for it, I have to send it to the lab. Then, I have to get the lab to take it out of line and put a "rush" on it if I think the case is going to trial. Then I have to send the defendant a notice that I intend to enter the lab results as evidence at LEAST 21 days before trial. If the defendant objects, I then have to subpeona the lab analyst to appear in court himself, making the state's backlog worse because that is time that he is not spending in the lab analyzing drugs. This also means that I have to ask for a continuance in my case at least twice in order to give the lab enough time to do the analysis and to send my notice of intent 21 days ahead of time.

What's the point? The point is that if I stop somebody and they are honest and polite with me, and they don't play games, and when I tell them that I can smell marijuana that they give up what they have, it is simply not worth going through all that hassle to prosecute somebody that has a very minor amount of marijuana. It clogs up the system. So, taking care of a little weed on the roadside is not out of the question. Or, if for some reason I do end up arresting, I will be happy in those cases to suspend all of the jail time and most of the fine amount in exchange for a guilty plea where I don't have to go to that trouble.

However, if you run from me, lie to me, insult my intelligence, piss me off by playing games, etc., etc., I will be more than happy to follow through with the entire process in order to get the conviction. And then I will be asking for a sentence which is commensurate with the time and trouble that the state had to go through to get to that point.

Buzzby

What about the DUI aspect? When you say "stop" I'm assuming you mean a traffic stop. If you smell marijuana it would be probable that the driver and passengers had been smoking in the car. Would you perform a field sobriety test?

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phuzz01

Sure, if I thought the driver was impaired, I would perform SFSTs. But, DWI drugs cases are much harder to get a conviction on than DWI alcohol cases. Also, if I thought the driver was driving around high, I would be less likely to cut them a break...

Still, I stop cars all the time when it is pretty obvious based on the totality of the circumstances that there is pot in the car. Since my state does not allow me to search without consent or a warrant (based on probable cause and the motor vehicle expception alone), it usually becomes a game. Are the occupants going to admit to and give up what they have? In that case, I'm not going to spend the next three months falling behind on important criminal cases (burglaries, domestic assaults, etc.) in order to do excessive amounts of work for a very minor misdemeanor drug conviction. Or are they going to play games, tell lies to get out of other lies, and act like I don't see/smell/etc. what I know I do. In that case, I'm not going to bend over backwards to help them out or cut them a break.

For me, it's really a mutual respect thing. If people show me the courtesy and respect that I deserve, I will treat them with the same courtesy and respect. If someone is going to treat me like "a f***ing pig," then I'm going to treat them like a "f***ing criminal."

CardBoardBox

I live in British Columbia, does anyone know the minimal penalty for posession under 10grams?

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