Prince

Spoke to my wife yesterday and she mentioned that when it comes to crimes dealing with narcotics, there is no burden of proof. Essentially, she suggested, that the following could happen: someone we barely know, our neighbour for example, could get busted for possession of marijuana. He could then claim that he bought it from us, even though we never spoke with him, and we've never had weed. We could do time for this fake crime even if there was NO PROOF other than our neighbour's word. Is this true? How the hell could this be? Isn't this extremely unconstitutional? What is this Gestapo shit?

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Who is John Galt?

tinfoil

I am fairly certain that it would take more than that.

I am fairly certain you would get slapped with a search warrant though. Just don't keep saleable amounts of pot around and you'll be fine.

Once the goob get's out of jail, sue his ass.

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Get off your fuckin cross. We need the fuckin space to nail the next fool martyr.

CrazySaturn

Prolly won't happen. First off you need to smoke pot, so if you don't do that and they do a drug test finding you don't, his story falls completely apart.
Then you could get testimony from neighbors saying they never saw you talk/smoke/anything.
Contrary to popular belief, our judicial system does have merit to itself.

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What's the difference between you and a mallard with a cold? One's a sick duck...I can't remember how it ends, but your mother is a whore!

etla

Course any other illegal activity you may have around your house you can now be charged with like that switch blade or handgun.

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Subvert the Dominant Paradigm

legolas

The system doesn't work. A burglar could break into your house and fall and hurt himself and sue you. There are a million other things like fat people suing fast food restaurants that just don't make sense and aren't fair.

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"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."

Lyaec123

Yeah, but all those things that appear not fair are loopholes in the system that are there and designed to make sure that something else, and probably something more important is covered. IE fat people sueing over health damages is a loophole in the idea that people could sue a corporation for giving them something that caused cancer unknowingly. Sure fatty food is a little different than say carcinogen laden chemical supplies, but same idea, and it's a lot more important to have the idea there for the serious matter than for the stupid case that may get a lot of publicity but will most likely be thrown out before it gets anywhere. We hear so little of the real story from the media on these cases anyway that it may sound really dumb from the headline, but if you were to actually sit in the courtroom and listen to the proceedings I can almost assure you that you would have a little bit of a different take on the matter.

Nimbletoe

Or doctors that get sued trying to save someone that has no chance of living.


"What do you do for a living?"

"I get sued trying to save lives. Some people call me a doctor."

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Go Pistons!

MacGnG

just because you pass a drug test doesnt get you cleared; if they are tryin to fuck with you they will say something like oh you dont smoke it you *just* sell it, or some crap like that, like WTF. thats all bs cause it wouldnt really hold up in court unless they had some real evidence.

Thraeryn

The bottom line:

Get a good criminal lawyer if you're ever involved in this sort of thing.

The public defender would be my first choice; I imagine that they spend half their lives doing this sort of thing.

Cynthetiq

burden of proof? ask the media about burden of proof...

Steve Patagones vs. Al Sharpton, Tawana Brawley... His life is ruined all based on "supposition."

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I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

kurty[B]

A roommate's psycho-ex-girlfriend showed up at our house, forcefully invited herself in (we were baking it all up, that roommate she used to be with never smoked anything ever), and she went and yelled at him for a while, I won't get into the whole story, but they both called the police after he got her out of the house.

She went out to her car and started slapping her wrists and giving herself bruises (psycho I know), and when they showed up told the police a bunch of things along the lines of her ex-boyfriend pushing her, and hitting her and that he was smoking pot. The police questioned everyone about the incident, but didn't seem to care about any pot just about domestic violence, and both roommate and psycho were taken to jail for the night, and the cops have never harrassed us since??

I've heard that for them to get a warrant they need more than just a single person claiming that there's pot being sold or used at a place. Sure if they can see it from the front door, or smell it, then that's reasonable cause, but I don't know if they took what she said and chucked it up to the wind, because she was rather hysterical at the time.

skysooner

That's not quite true. There are many stories about an informant giving information on a stash of pot somewhere. The cops get a warrant and can physically bust down your door if you don't answer in the middle of the night. There have even been cases where people have been shot in their homes at night by the police when they get up to protest the intrusion (it turns out the cops had the wrong address). There have been cases where police plant evidence if you piss them off. The system is not supposed to convict you if you are not guilty, but I think it happens all the time. There are also cases where property is confiscated just due to their thought that it "might" have been used in a crime. The police sell the seized property and then the person is ultimately found to be innocent. They don't get their money or property back.