When is giving a cop consent to search not consent? When the consent is obtained as a result of an illegal detention. I recently spoke with someone who was arrested for Possession of Marijuana on the Comal River in New Braunfels.
The person was floating down the Comal in an inner tube with a group of several people. There was a cooler attatched to the tube in which this person was riding. A cop on the riverbank ordered the tuber to come over to where the cop was standing. The cop did not say why he had stopped the tuber. The cop simply asked if he could search the cooler.
Deferred adjudication in drug cases isn't all it's cracked up to be (excuse the bad pun). A got a call from the father of a potential client in a Guadalupe County Possession of Marijuana case and was asked "Why does he even need a lawyer, isn't he just going to get deferred adjudication anyway?" Why does he need a lawyer?
I got a client's Possession of Marijuana case dismissed at the jury trial docket in Seguin this week.
The first question the client asked me after the State told us it would dismiss the case was: "How soon can I get my arrest record expunged?"
This is an important question for him, since he is job-hunting, and even an arrest for Possession of Marijuana might show up on a potential employer's criminal background check. The answer I had to give him, unfortunately, was: "Not as soon as you would like or expect."