Aggravating Factors

I took a call from a potential client this morning that reminds me how little most people understand about the system or their rights. During a traffic stop, police asked permission to search his car, and the search resulted in a few long forgotten marijuana seeds. Hardly the crime of the century, but a crime with serious ramifications nonetheless.

The person’s mistake? The police asked for consent to search, and he said yes thinking he was clean.

The police ask for permission if (and ONLY if) they don’t have enough evidence to get a warrant. Police officers cannot search based on their hunches; or if a person fits a profile; or for the hell of it; or any of the hundred other reasons police have “in their gut” for wanting to search a car.

Unless you give permission! Then it doesn’t really matter what they believed. If a person consents, barring a literal gun to the head, the search is almost certainly going to be upheld. Now this person faces criminal charges, had his truck seized (no doubt so they get a warrant to tear it apart looking for more drugs), and is in a bit of hot water.

Oh, and because these were seeds, he can be charged with growing weed, which is a felony.

Hopefully, the police find nothing else, charge him with misdemeanors and we can work out a solution that pleases everyone. He wouldn’t be in this predicament if he simply said to the police “No, you may not search my car.”