|
luvdemshrooms
Two inch dick..but it spins!?


Registered: 11/29/01
Posts: 34,247
Loc: Lost In Space
|
Mass. police are banned from stopping drivers to issue marijuana possession citations 2
#22277787 - 09/23/15 08:25 AM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
Mass. police are banned from stopping drivers to issue marijuana possession citations By Travis Andersen and John R. Ellement Globe Staff September 22, 2015
In a decision hailed by civil rights advocates and supporters of marijuana legalization, the state’s highest court ruled Tuesday that police cannot stop motorists solely because they suspect the vehicle’s occupants are in possession of the drug.
The Supreme Judicial Court based its 5-2 ruling largely on a measure that voters approved in 2008 that reduced possession of an ounce or less of marijuana from a criminal offense to a civil violation punishable by a fine.
“Permitting police to stop a vehicle based on reasonable suspicion that an occupant possesses marijuana does not serve [the] objectives” of the law change, Justice Margot Botsford wrote for the majority.
Botsford wrote that allowing such stops “does not refocus police efforts on pursuing more serious crime,” another goal of changing the law.
The ruling does not prevent police from issuing citations for marijuana possession if they stop a driver for a traffic infraction, such as speeding, and later notice marijuana in plain view inside the vehicle.
Botsford’s opinion was welcomed by the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol in Massachusetts, a group pushing for a 2016 ballot question that would legalize marijuana for adult recreational use.
Jim Borghesani, a spokesman for the campaign, said in a statement that the ruling “provides further clarification for how police officers should handle vehicle stops in the era of decriminalization, and it advances the clear message sent by voters in 2008 to refocus police activity on more serious crimes.”
Matthew Segal, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, echoed that view, saying that with the vote to decriminalize marijuana in 2008, residents of the Commonwealth were making a statement “about how the police ought to spend their time and the taxpayers’ money.”
Pulling over a car on suspicion of marijuana possession, he said, is “not consistent with the Massachusetts constitution, nor is it consistent with the will of the voters who passed decriminalization.”
David Procopio, a State Police spokesman, said in a statement that troopers are not primarily concerned about a vehicle occupant who possesses an ounce or less of marijuana. He said troopers usually make observations of marijuana use after stopping a car for other reasons, such as traffic infractions.
“What does concern us about marijuana, even amounts less than an ounce . . . is whether the operator has used it and is thus driving while impaired,” Procopio said. “The voters decriminalized possession of less than an ounce. That does not mean that using less than an ounce means you are OK to drive . . . and this ruling will have no impact on the observations we use to establish probable cause for drugged driving or our determination that a driver should be charged as such.”
Botsford’s opinion followed SJC rulings in 2011 and last year finding that the odor of burned marijuana alone does not provide grounds for police to order occupants to exit a car, and that the smell of burned or unburned marijuana does not justify searching a vehicle without a warrant.
John L. Calcagni III, a lawyer for Elivette Rodriguez, the defendant at the center of Tuesday’s ruling, noted that the prior opinions dealt with exit orders and searches of vehicles, and he said Tuesday’s decision “closed the loop” in finding that police cannot even stop a car based on suspicion of marijuana possession.
“That is something that they had not yet done,” Calcagni said.
Rodriguez was a passenger in a vehicle that New Bedford police stopped in 2012 after allegedly detecting an odor of marijuana coming from the passing automobile.
The police vehicle and the suspect car both had their windows down at the time, and police on a prior occasion had arrested an occupant of the same vehicle for heroin possession.
During the stop involving Rodriguez, police found a bag containing 60 Percocet pills inside the vehicle, and Rodriguez was charged with possessing a Class B substance with intent to distribute and other crimes, Botsford wrote.
The court’s majority ruled Tuesday that the pills were inadmissable in court, because the initial stop was not justified. The SJC referred the case to the district court for “further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
Bristol District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III’s office declined to comment, except to say they will no longer pursue their case against Rodriguez, in light of the ruling.
Bristol prosecutors who argued the Rodriguez case before the SJC asserted that police can stop vehicles for a civil marijuana offense, just as they can for a civil traffic offense.
The court rejected that argument, finding that traffic laws promote road safety, but there “is no obvious and direct link” between issuing civil citations for marijuana possession and maintaining highway safety.
Justice Robert Cordy, in a dissenting opinion, expressed a different view, writing that even if not all civil marijuana violations affect highway safety, infractions “occurring in motor vehicles do implicate concerns regarding traffic and automobile safety.”
He argued that “there is no constitutionally based reason to distinguish” motor vehicle stops for civil marijuana violations from stops for traffic infractions.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/09/22/mass-police-are-banned-from-stopping-drivers-issue-marijuana-possession-citations/NElouAgDnNmLLJTNuoLh9K/story.html
-------------------- You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers
|
Humility
Working on it



Registered: 10/07/08
Posts: 6,745
Last seen: 6 years, 11 months
|
Re: Mass. police are banned from stopping drivers to issue marijuana possession citations [Re: luvdemshrooms] 2
#22277944 - 09/23/15 09:24 AM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
This is a huge step. Laws like this that clearly prohibit or refocus America's unfortunately extant standing army aimed at the civilian populace could go a long way to making the roads and homes of Americans a lot safer once again.
I look forward to explaining to children of the future the objective facts about drugs and drug use, and the great harm caused to, quite frankly the entire world, that came from the Drug War - a global, American-inspired campaign that was somewhere between panicked hysteria, great economic and social control and potential - from demonizing hemp for the tobacco and paper industries to the 21st century rise of privatized prisons.
People will look back on it like modern folks look back on the slaughter of millions by the Mongols, WWII, or the Holocaust. People often scoff but I am adamant in my belief that the Drug War has negatively affected the lives of FAR MORE than the holocaust or the World War due to the truly global nature and duration of the conflict. Throughout the generations untold families, and indeed entire communities of people have been enslaved, kept underfoot, imprisoned generationally, subjected to ghettos and rural country living situations where drugs, poverty, violence and violent corrupt "enforcement" are the only things some folks grow up knowing.
It is stupendous. The Western world, specifically post-colonial European governments and high-power and monied players have been able to exert such an unimaginable amount of control over the world for the last couple of hundred years following the petering out of the rape and pillage of the "Age of Discovery" and then the subsequent "Colonial" eras. Much of this would never have been possible without control over the world's most profitable and desired resources. While Gold, Tobacco, Oil, Lumber, etc. have all been huge exports over the centuries, NOTHING has matched the economic potential of psychoactive substances. The last 100-150 years, beginning with the advent of morphine has seen an increasing ramping up of European and Western attempted control over world drug markets in order to leverage and project power and to keep in check those global players who, throughout the decades have popped up here and there, challenging the system.
Keeping cops from arresting people for possessing cannabis is something that some folks barely see as "a thing" now, especially out in CA and CO. My entire life has been lived with the knowledge of how much cannabis to have on me when and where, how to smoke, how to behave in public, when to keep secret, when to be myself etc. Failure to do so properly can result in a severe physical beating, the sort you'd imagine from Malaysia or Singapore and a 30-180 day stay in a cage.
Now they're talking about cops can't even pull you over if they ACTIVELY see you in possession of cannabis while driving. Amazing.
Much more work needs to be done, especially in ensuring these new laws are applied to all socio-economic groups and individuals of all cultural groups and skin tones. This however has huge positive potential.
--------------------

|
Jokeshopbeard
Humble Student

Registered: 11/30/11
Posts: 26,088
Loc: Deep in the system
|
Re: Mass. police are banned from stopping drivers to issue marijuana possession citations [Re: Humility]
#22279429 - 09/23/15 03:51 PM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
Great post Humility, really well said man.
-------------------- Let it be seen that you are nothing. And in knowing that you are nothing... there is nothing to lose, there is nothing to gain. What can happen to you? Something can happen to the body, but it will either heal or it won't. What's the big deal? Let life knock you to bits. Let life take you apart. Let life destroy you. It will only destroy what you are not. --Jac O'keeffe
|
thebitterbuffalo26
Fartyr



Registered: 04/18/15
Posts: 555
Loc: Texas
Last seen: 7 years, 7 months
|
Re: Mass. police are banned from stopping drivers to issue marijuana possession citations [Re: Humility]
#22279687 - 09/23/15 04:55 PM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
Word. We need to take a lot of the power police forces have usurped from the community back. Cops not being able to leverage their power and will on you and take away your rights because, just maybe, you're car smells like weed makes me smile. Not having to worry about that stupid shit increases my quality of life.
--------------------
|
goldcaphunter
EMS Medic



Registered: 07/29/12
Posts: 7,432
Loc: Massachusetts
Last seen: 3 years, 2 months
|
Re: Mass. police are banned from stopping drivers to issue marijuana possession citations [Re: thebitterbuffalo26]
#22280308 - 09/23/15 07:31 PM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
Massachusetts has always been pretty relaxed about weed in my experience. It's great to have in the books though.
--------------------
  The picture to the far left is a reminder to our users to stay safe and healthy, that's my third open heart surgery due to over use of amps. Stay safe kiddos
|
Shpongle1



Registered: 10/20/09
Posts: 3,163
Loc: Above The Clouds
Last seen: 2 years, 5 months
|
Re: Mass. police are banned from stopping drivers to issue marijuana possession citations [Re: goldcaphunter]
#22286766 - 09/25/15 12:34 AM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
Just make it legal.
-------------------- There are more people imprisoned for the commission of drug offenses in the United States - close to 500,000 - than are incarcerated in England, France, Germany, and Japan for all crimes combined. Examined in another way, the United States has 100,000 more people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses than all the countries of the European Union combined, despite the fact that the European Union has 100 million more citizens.
- "Drugs and Drug Policy: The Control of Consciousness Alteration, 2007.
|
|