A Florida man has filed a lawsuit against the city of Orlando as well as a drug testing company that manufactures roadside drug testing kits that officers use. The man was arrested in December 2015 after he was pulled over for allegedly speeding.
The man reports that he was asked if the officer could search his car, and he consented. He says that she found some pieces of doughnut glaze on the floor of his car and told him that she had found drugs. The man told her that it was doughnut glaze, and he says that the officer told him it was crystal methamphetamine. She then used a roadside drug testing kit that returned two false positives for methamphetamine on the doughnut glaze.
The man was arrested and spent a little over 10 hours in jail. He says he was not given medication for a medical condition that he suffers from. Several weeks later, the confirmation test from the lab came back and confirmed that the substance was doughnut glaze and not methamphetamine. The prosecutor dropped the charges, but the man is seeking $15,000 in damages and says his goal is to get the testing kits off of the streets.
Drug possession charges can result in severe penalties if a conviction is obtained, including incarceration and hefty fines. As such, people who are facing them may want to meet with a criminal defense attorney as soon as possible. The attorney might, after reviewing the evidence, challenge the way that the search that led to the seizure of the drugs was conducted. If drugs were found after the defendant was pulled over, an attorney might assert that the traffic stop was made without the required reasonable suspicion.
Source: The Huffington Post, “Man jailed in doughnut glaze-meth mix-up sues city, drug test company,” Steven Hoffer, Oct. 25, 2016
