Orange County marijuana arrest

July 19, 2018

Marijuana Arrests Still Disproportionate Toward Minorities

One of the benefits of expanding marijuana legalization across the country is that it has afforded an opportunity to correct the marijuana criminal defense disparity in marijuana arrests along race and socio-economic lines. These disparities have negatively impacted black people, Hispanics, and other oppressed groups. The efforts, however, are not producing immediately successful results. A report from New Frontier Data is showing that even now black and Hispanic suspects are arrested at nine times the rate of suspects who are white, despite the fact that data shows the three subgroups sell cannabis at similar rates.

According to the data, from 1997 to 2016, marijuana arrests made up more than 40 percent of drug-related arrests, totaling 15.7 million. Arrests overall from cannabis-related offenses have declined slightly in recent years, down from their height in 2007. This is likely reflective of states expanding marijuana legalization, though the numbers are not significantly lower than the overall average since 1997. For example, arrests for possession hit a low in 2015 of 575,000, but went up again in 2016 to 588,000, neither of which is much lower than 599,000 way back in 1998. Considering 30 states now allow provisions for medical marijuana and nine, plus Washington, D.C., have recreational laws on the books, these numbers should be improving more drastically over the 20-year-old stats. Continue reading

June 27, 2016

Supreme Court May Have Just Expanded Unlawful Police Searches

By Cannabis Law Group

The U.S. Supreme Court has just handed down two rulings that may have widened the ability of law enforcement to conduct illegal searches – something our Los Angeles marijuana arrest lawyers find deeply troubling. handcuffs6

In one case, there was an expansion of the exception to a long-standing rule that unlawfully-gathered evidence had to be discarded. In the second ruling, the court held that those who deal drugs – even those who only selling locally to their neighbors – were in effect a part of some larger interstate commerce.

As Phillip Smith of StopTheDrugWar.org pointed out, these two decisions:

Widen local police’s ability to sidestep the law without accountability;
Give prosecutors the muscle of the federal government to crush small-time, low-level drug dealers and other criminals.

The high court has long deferred to the position of law enforcement officers. But this is often done to the detriment of the public at-large. Continue reading

June 13, 2016

Court: 30 Days Jail for Mom in Marijuana Window-Jumper Case

By Cannabis Law Group

A Colorado woman whose son was injured when he jumped out of a window after consuming a marijuana-laced brownie his mother had procured for his friend will serve 30 days in jail. chippedglass

That’s according to the latest from The Coloradoan, which also noted the district court judge tacked on two years of probation as well.

Defendant had pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge of providing marijuana to a person who was younger than 21. However, she was deemed not guilty of the felony charge of witness tampering. Continue reading