Maryland’s highest court has issued another ruling that limits the ability of police to cite marijuana as a reason to arrest and search people, saying officers may not arrest people based on the smell of marijuana alone.
“The odor of marijuana, without more, does not provide law enforcement officers with the requisite probable cause to arrest and perform a warrantless search of that person incident to the arrest,” the court said in a unanimous ruling authored by Chief Judge Mary Ellen Barbera.
(Featured image is “smoke” by DaleKav and is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The previous ruling was interesting enough. It said something to the effect of “if you see less than 10 grams (about a 1/3rd of an ounce), that isn’t justification to search for more in the hopes that you find a criminal amount.”
But now we’re in a place where cops are, officially, no longer allowed to say “I smelled the distinct odor of marijuana” as justification for doing something without a warrant anymore. They have to come up with something else.
“I thought I saw a lump that might have been a concealed gun”, maybe.Report
Or they will just get a drug dog out there.Report