Cotton Candy Arrest

Dasha Fincher is suing Monroe County, Georgia, two deputies, and the company Sirchie, which manufactures a roadside drug test popular with law enforcement for false and malicious arrest. Fincher is seeking equitable relief and monetary damages. 

Fincher spent three months in jail after a car she was riding in was pulled over by cops who thought an old piece of blue cotton candy was methamphetamine. A crime lab found out that they were wrong. 

The two sheriff's deputies said they pulled over the car on New Year's Eve in 2016 because the windows were tinted, but they later admitted the windows were legal. They said they found a clear plastic bag which contained a blue substance, spherical in shape, which was located in the floor board. Fincher and the driver said that it was just a bag of blue cotton candy. 

The officers arrested Fincher and the driver after the roadside test said the substance was positive for methamphetamine. Fincher was charged with trafficking and possession of meth with intent to distribute it.

Propublica published a story in 2016 about the limits of the Nark II despite a marketing campaign by Sirchie who supplies equipment to law enforcement agencies. A year earlier, the Innocence Project published a story that included strange items incorrectly identified by police tests as drugs, leading to wrongful arrests.

Fincher was incarcerated for over three months because she was unable to pay her $1 million cash bond. The crime lab showed that the cotton candy wasn't a controlled substance on March 22, 2017, but Fincher wasn't released from jail until April 4, 2017 when her charges were dropped. However, the charges remained on her record. Fincher missed the birth of her twin grandsons and broke her hand on a concrete wall when she punched it in frustration during her incarceration. The complaint mentions that she also missed her daughter's miscarriage and was unable to console her in jail.

Comments from Allen:
 Let’s start with the stop.  In this case, the “stop for window tint.”

I was told, in a national narcotics crime seminar several years ago, that if you lived within 50 miles of an interstate highway, you were living near a “drug corridor.”  That means, since about 99% of the nation’s population lives within 50 miles of an interstate highway, the highway down the street from your house is an expressway to disburse illegal drugs throughout this country.  The State Police do not want this to happen, so they will be looking for any legal excuse to search every car they stop, so they can look for drugs.

And if your car has out-of-state plates?  Well...maybe your car with all of the Christmas presents purchased in Salt Lake City is hiding meth and cocaine inside those packages.  Even worse, if your car passes through Idaho, where marijuana is illegal, and your plates identify you as coming from Montana, Nevada, California, Oregon or Washington, where marijuana is legal, guess what illegal drug the State Police are sure will be found in your car.

Along with speeding, one of the common excuses police use to stop cars is “illegal window tint.”  Most people do not know that car windows can only be tinted to a specific darkness.  A car window that is too dark can be stopped by police, even if the window tint is legal in the state the car came from, and even if the car was built with that window tint.  Too dark is too dark.

Frankly, the police generally do not care how dark your tinted windows are; if you are stopped for window tint, they are looking for drugs.  This is called a “pretextual stop,” and it is perfectly legal.  However, when the police know that your window tint is legal and stop you anyway, that is an illegal arrest, and any contraband found after an illegal arrest cannot be used to prosecute you for a crime.

Further, if you suffer a significant harm, you can sue the police officers under federal law for a violation of your federal civil rights.  You cannot sue the state, county or city, however, for a federal offense; that would violate state sovereignty, unless you can prove a pattern of illegality that violates civil rights.  That does not mean you cannot actually recover money, however, as police officers are commonly insured against wrongfully arresting people.

In this case, Ms. Fischer sued the county as well as law enforcement officers.  If she can’t prove a pattern of violations of people’s rights by the county, that part of the suit will be dismissed.

Sources for more information:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mbvd/wrongful-arrest-police-mistook-cotton-candy-meth?fbclid=IwAR0Sj3FkXfRnpT3EcSVrzj1wY3F9dr5ogffXC0AqPfXMXADDfXkChOzGV-M

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