A friend’s brother was recently pulled over and his vehicle searched. The police found nothing in the vehicle after a thorough search, but they wrote him a ticket for ‘Manifestation for the intent to purchase narcotics/marijuana’. Has anyone heard anything about this? What’s even weirder is the cop left the ticket on the guy’s dash and told him he probably wouldn’t want to sign this, but to show up at court. He’s getting a lawyer, I’ve never heard of this kind of charge. I think maybe the cop is just trying to scare him or fuck with his head.
IANAL, but it appears that the idea of “intent to purchase” gets around the sticky situation where someone buys fake drugs. They are intending to purchase the real thing, so it’s still a crime, but it’s not actually purchasing the illegal substance. How this relates, I’m not quite sure. Maybe they found something that wasn’t marijuana but looked similar.
OK, just got some more info to clarify this situation.
This was after what seemed like a routine traffic stop, just a few blocks from his house. There was nothing drug-related found in his vehicle. The guy was cuffed and placed in the back of the police car while the cop searched his car. He was not asked permission to search the car. The guy’s car does smell like marijuana (probably why they searched, though not sure why they pulled him over), but he had none on him.
‘Manifestation for the intent to purchace’?? What did he do, flag the cop down and say, “Hey, I’m planning on buying some bud”? Sounds like a charge my brother got once at a football game: Simulated Intoxication. They thought he was drunk because he was jumping up and down and yelling (at a football game, no less!), but he blew a zero on the breathalizer. They got him for pretending to be drunk. :rolleyes:
I made a typo, it was ‘manifestation OF the intent’, not ‘for’.
I too felt like this was just some form of harassment. The really weird part was the cop telling the guy that he probably didn’t want to sign the citation, and not making him do so. How can the courts prove that the citation was given to the guy if he didn’t sign it? He could just say that he was pulled over, searched, and then let go, and that the citation had to have been written after the fact.
Questions like this should always note the state in which it occurred.
My guess is that your buddy got pulled over in a drug area where he was manifestly searching for dealers as he circled the block. God you people write some funny laws down there. I have no idea what the elements of such an offence would be but it should be easy to dredge up knowing the jurisdiction.
Badtz Maru WAG here - perhaps you’re dealing with a very localized law (as in city statute). I remember a brief fling my city had with a very structured law making it illegal to go into certain neighborhoods 'cause there was such high (pardon the pun) drug traffic.
Was this constitutional? pro’bly not, I do recall they dropped the efforts quickly.
For example, it is a felony in the State of MI to be in a ‘drug house’ (“frequenting” is the legal term IIRC). So what they seem to be alleging is that there’s this guy whose car reeks of marijuana driving down a neighborhood that is a known area for drug traffic, barring any other reasonable excuse to be in the neighborhood (‘gee my gramma lives there’), that’s the charge.
I am not defending the law, charge etc, merely suggesting what may be the underlying basis for it, as requested by the OP.
Had a quick look at texas statutes this morning and I don’t see anything to justify this charge.
Sure he didn’t find a roach?
No section number quoted?
should purchase = possess?
He should try to get a free ten minute referal if such a thing is available there. It really does look like the cop is advancing his own new and inovative theory of liability but I am not familliar enough with texas statutes to be certain that I have covered all bases.
Unless the guy lied to his sister (who related the story to me) they found nothing on him. A roach would be enough for a drug possession charge, anyway. Why get him for ‘intent to purchase’ when he already had some?
The guy had a good reason to be in the area, he was a few blocks from his home.
I’ve been pulled over for being in the wrong neighborhood before, but they always make up some excuse for pulling me over, like my plate light was out or I was weaving.
Welcome to the Dope, ** kk5862**. But in the future you may want to check the dates on old postings. This thread is more than ten years old. I suspect the original poster’s friend’s brother has already resolved the situation, and I don’t think he’s reading the board anymore anyway.
By the way, if you keep reading this thread, you’ll probably see a lot of zombie jokes. Around here, we refer to old threads ‘revived’ by a new posting as zombies.
The courts will have the evidence of the cop, testifying that he gave it to the guy. And like everything else, the court weighs that testimony against the guys claim that he never got it, and they reach a verdict.
(Now, they might also have evidence from an audio recording of the cops talk with the guy, or even a dash camera video of him writing the citation & putting it in the car. That is becoming quite common now, given the new, cheap technology.)