Another War On Drugs Failure

[Rageaholic]

Link to story.

She was sentenced to jail for 48 hours over some silly drug related offense, but the Judge somehow forgot about her and she ended up serving 5 months.

I think it's bad enough that she was sentenced 48 hours for this, but five months? No way... This war on drugs needs to stop. All it's doing is filling up jail cells.

[s_stabeler]

it's not actually a war on drugs failure- it's a justice system failure.
1) why is a judge, on a minor charge (she was charged with diluting a drugs test) able to order someone detained "until further order of this court"? for the love of all that is holy, that is functionally a life sentence! (since you have to be specifically let out)
2) why was she sentanced without a hearing? That's a Fifth and Sixth amendment rights violation right there. The detention probably breaches the eighth (cruel and unusual punishment- specifically, an extended prison stay in what is functionally not significantly worse than a speeding ticket)

in short, this looks like a classic case of what a judge should NOT do.

[Gravekeeper]

Agreed, this isn't so much the war on drugs as it is total and utter incompetence. I mean it seems like they didn't even notify her attorney she had been jailed. On top of not allowing legal counsel.

[s_stabeler]

Agreed, this isn't so much the war on drugs as it is total and utter incompetence. I mean it seems like they didn't even notify her attorney she had been jailed. On top of not allowing legal counsel.

I've edited my post, so you may want to reread, but it actually rises to criminally incompetant. I count 3 constitutional rights breached, and serious ones at that.

[Greenday]

1) why is a judge, on a minor charge (she was charged with diluting a drugs test) able to order someone detained "until further order of this court"? for the love of all that is holy, that is functionally a life sentence! (since you have to be specifically let out)
2) why was she sentanced without a hearing? That's a Fifth and Sixth amendment rights violation right there. The detention probably breaches the eighth (cruel and unusual punishment- specifically, an extended prison stay in what is functionally not significantly worse than a speeding ticket)

in short, this looks like a classic case of what a judge should NOT do.

A lot of it probably has something to do with her being on parole and violating her parole. If you break the rules while on parole, you go to jail. Not an unknown concept.

[s_stabeler]

Irrelevant. It still requires a hearing, and the sentence would be a revocation of her a parole, not "until further order of this court"- specifically because you DO need to prove the woman watered down the sample. For example, she may simply have been drinking a lot- still not ideal for the test , but not nessecarily a breach of parole.

[Greenday]

Irrelevant. It still requires a hearing, and the sentence would be a revocation of her a parole, not "until further order of this court"- specifically because you DO need to prove the woman watered down the sample. For example, she may simply have been drinking a lot- still not ideal for the test , but not nessecarily a breach of parole.

Actually, drinking tons of water to dilute your urine is a violation of urine drug testing. Most places, if they notice your urine is super clear, will make you do it again when it's not watered down.

[BlaqueKatt]

Main thing I have an issue with is there are maybe 10-15 stories on this(the "daily fail" is a tabloid from what I know, and highly untrustworthy), all the same day, and all reference the same original, with no new information added, and no credit to the original writer (plagiarism). You can't verify a story with the same copy pasted story on another site under a different name.

and how /why would a BRITISH paper print a story from a very small town in Indiana? (A lot of false viral news stories start this way)

[s_stabeler]

Actually, drinking tons of water to dilute your urine is a violation of urine drug testing. Most places, if they notice your urine is super clear, will make you do it again when it's not watered down.

again- is it bad enough to violate her parole? I don't think so, at least not if it's only rarely. If she keeps doing it, then it would. but once? I'd let it slide.

[Rageaholic]

again- is it bad enough to violate her parole? I don't think so, at least not if it's only rarely. If she keeps doing it, then it would. but once? I'd let it slide.

I wonder how much water you'd have to drink to distort the results of the test. Depending on how sensitive the tests are to that kind of thing, it's possible that it was unintentional.

[Gravekeeper]

You can't verify a story with the same copy pasted story on another site under a different name.

It took me 5 seconds on Google to verify it, find updated information and find ongoing articles about it going back to Jan.

and how /why would a BRITISH paper print a story from a very small town in Indiana? (A lot of false viral news stories start this way)

Uh. Because its news and they always run stories from the US? Did you not notice the website has a "US" news tab at the top?

Maybe put in a little bit of effort before you complain? >.>

[Andara Bledin]

For the "how much water" question, it probably doesn't take all that much. I regularly drink enough in short bursts to result in urine that wouldn't be useful for testing.

[s_stabeler]

it depends on a few factors- 1) how recently you went to the loo- if you emptied your bladder, then drank a small amount of water, you end up with extremely dilute urine. 2) how long it is between drinking water and the test. The longer it is between drinking water and the test, the moire concentrated the urine.

the point is that the only situation I can think of where a drugs test that had too much water should result in revocation of parole is when this keeps happening ( say, this is the third test in a row that X has had too much water in their urine for) and even then, I would look into if other tests are available instead (is there a blood test, for example?)

[Greenday]

I think you guys would be shocked at how sensitive the instruments for drug testing are. It takes a lot more than a glass of water to dilute it to the point where you can't see anything.

[s_stabeler]

it does if there's not much more than water IN the urine.