Marijuana has a distinct aroma, look and taste, but does it have a unique sound? Not according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
On Monday, May 8th, the court reversed and remanded a case back to the district court in Arizona where Andrew Thomas, who has been serving a 41-month sentence for “conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute marijuana” after a police officer testifying in the case stated he heard the distinct sound of a bale of marijuana being unloaded in a garage.
On December 23, 1997, Daniel Jankowski, a Pima County Sheriff’s Department detective, began surveillance of a residence. Jankowski witnessed a number of guests entering and leaving the house. During a supression hearing Jankowski testified that he heard three or four thumps and that, “Something was being loaded into the back end of the El Camino.” On cross-examination, he stated, “If youÕve ever seen a large bale of marijuana being dropped onto something, it makes a flat-sounding kind of thump that, to me, is pretty distinctive at times.”
Jankowski, who never saw or smelled marijuana, radioed for other officers to stop the car after it left the garage. After stopping the vehicle, officers smelled marijuana, which then led to a search of the garage.
The district court deferred to the experience of Jankowski and denied the defendant’s suppression motion.
Reversing that decision, Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in his opinion, “Marijuana has a distinctive appearance, taste and odor, and perhaps even a feel, but it does not have a distinctive sound. This is true regardless how it is packaged…The thumps that Jankowski heard could have been generated by dropped 12 or 13-pound bags or bales of potting soil, cut grass, bird seed, dog food — anything. His claim that the thumps were the distinct sound of marijuana bales was, at best, a hunch or mere conjecture, not an objective and reasonable inference.”
“This is a solid Fourth Amendment decision based on the landmark case Terry v. Ohio,” said Tom Dean, Esq., NORML Foundation Litigation Director. “With only a hunch that the packages contained marijuana, the officer here should have further investigated and developed his facts before he rushed to stop the car. Simply put, he jumped the gun.”
For more information, please contact Tom Dean, Esq., NORML Foundation Litigation Director at (202) 483-8751.
