Jacksonville Criminal Defense Attorney Protecting the Rights opf Clients Arrested in Florida’s Drug Trafficking Trap
No other stretch of coastline in the country has ever experienced a greater influx of illegal narcotics than Florida’s east coast from Miami to Jacksonville during the 1980’s. And even though much greater volumes of cannabis, cocaine, and heroin currently find their way into the U.S. via the Mexican border, the State of Florida still has some of the most draconian drug trafficking laws in the country.
Florida State Statute 893.135 elevates drug possession to trafficking—a first degree felony—based strictly on the weight of the drug. In other words, if you have an ounce of cocaine in your possession, you can be charged with narcotics trafficking in the State of Florida. Whether you intend to sell, deliver, or use the drug is irrelevant; it only matters that you are carrying an amount of the drug that exceeds the minimum weight required by the trafficking statute. The following is a list of the trafficking weights for some of the more common drug charges in the State of Florida:
- Cannabis/Marijuana greater than 25 lbs or 300 plants
- Cocaine greater than 28 grams (one ounce)
- Heroin, Opium, Morphine, Oxycodone, Hydrocodone greater than 4 grams
- Amphetamine/Methamphetamine greater than 14 grams (.5 ounces)
- MDMA/Ecstasy > 10 grams
In addition to some of the toughest sentences for drug crimes in the United States, Florida is the only state where the defendant has the burden of proving that he or she didn’t know that they were in possession of narcotics. In other words, the simple possession of a package containing narcotics is sufficient proof that there was criminal intent to traffic in narcotics. 893.101 is the applicable section of the Florida statutes.
To understand how this could result in a miscarriage of justice, consider the following scenario. One of the common ways that drug traffickers transport their narcotics is via special mail delivery to wrong addresses. Say that a heroin dealer in Saint Augustine has a purchaser in Jacksonville. The heroin buyer selects a Duval County address that he believes will be vacant at the time of delivery by Fed Ex. He then advises his Saint Augustine drug dealer to overnight a package to this random Jacksonville address. The idea is that he will watch the street for the delivery truck and intercept the package. If, by chance, the person who lives at the dummy address is home, he or she may unwittingly accept delivery of the package containing the heroin. The Jacksonville Police, who have been tracking the package, now come in to arrest the homeowner. The innocent homeowner is now required to prove that he or she had no idea about the Saint Augustine to Jacksonville drug delivery.
Another example would be a driver who gives a pill-addicted friend a ride to her criminal defense attorney’s office. The friend carelessly lays her purse on the passenger side floor. During the ride, a plain brown bag of prescription pills falls onto the floorboard. The driver notices the bag, but never checks the contents. A week later, the driver is stopped by the Jacksonville Police for an expired tag and the bag is discovered by the observant officer. The driver is subsequently arrested and must now prove the fact that he didn’t know that he was carrying illegal drugs.
It isn’t just defense attorneys who are appalled by this shifting of the burden of proof. In the past few years, several judges have thrown out cases where the defendants claimed that they were not aware that they were in possession of drugs. The Florida Supreme Court is currently reviewing the Shelton ruling, which declared that Florida’s unique burden of proof requirement was unconstitutional.