In order to be subjected to a search, police need probable cause; otherwise, it is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. For years, law enforcement officers in Maryland have used the odor of marijuana as their probable cause to search someone. The Maryland Court of Appeals issued another ruling recently that puts an end to this practice. Chief Judge Mary Ellen Barbera authored the unanimous ruling, which said in part: In order to lawfully arrest [...]

In 2015, a young woman named Jamie Maynard gave a small amount of heroin to an acquaintance, Courtney Penix, who later overdosed and died. Maynard was not a dealer or trafficker, but an addict trying to help out another addict. As authorities investigated, Maynard found herself swept up in the prosecution’s zeal to punish everyone and anyone connected to Penix’s death, and was eventually charged with involuntary manslaughter and drug trafficking. She was sentenced to [...]

The phrase “chain of custody” commonly refers to the proper preservation of tangible evidence that is used in trial. The burden is placed on the prosecution to show, every step of the way, that the evidence that is seized or taken is properly preserved. The prosecution needs to show that nobody was able to tamper with the evidence in any way. Some evidence must be preserved in refrigerator units or chemically preserved. Other types of [...]

The Baltimore Sun reported that a Maryland woman was charged with trying to smuggle hundreds of strips of a drug that treats opioid addiction into the Eastern Correctional Institution on the Eastern Shore. The Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services says they saw her “toss two blue packages containing the drugs [buprenorphine] over the visiting room wall in the western compound.” After posting $20,000 bond, she was released pending the processing of the criminal [...]

Prescription opioids are powerful pain killers which are used to treat moderate to severe pain and are often prescribed following surgery or injury or for cancer pain according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). For the past few years, as pharmaceutical companies have pushed their products on physicians to prescribe these powerful drugs for the treatment of other types of pain, despite the risks for dependence, abuse, and overdose, an epidemic [...]

The Baltimore Sun recently reported that Marilyn Mosby, the city’s state’s attorney, will no longer prosecute people for possessing marijuana, regardless of the amount of or their prior criminal history. Ms. Mosby also is asking the courts to vacate nearly 5,000 convictions for marijuana possession. She said the reason for this move is that she didn’t believe that pursuing convictions for marijuana possession was a way to make the city safer. Her position follows that [...]