{"id":39980,"date":"2019-09-29T08:18:33","date_gmt":"2019-09-29T13:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=39980"},"modified":"2019-09-29T08:44:31","modified_gmt":"2019-09-29T13:44:31","slug":"pa-in-a-mmj-state-the-smell-of-mj-can-still-be-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=39980","title":{"rendered":"PA: In a MMJ state, the smell of MJ can still be PC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOver the past several years, nearly half of our Sister States and this Commonwealth have legalized medical marijuana. Some States have also repealed their prohibitions against recreational use; Pennsylvania has not. [\u00b6] In this appeal, John Batista makes the novel argument that, because marijuana is now medically available in Pennsylvania, police officers may no longer rely upon its smell as a factor for developing probable cause. Like the trial court, we reject this theory. In certain instances, the smell of marijuana may still indicate that a crime is afoot, because the growth, distribution, possession, and use of marijuana without a state-issued permit remains illegal. Thus, the magistrate had a substantial basis to issue a search warrant for Batista’s garage, and we affirm the order denying suppression.\u201d E.g., the smell of a grow operation is probable cause unless it\u2019s licensed. Commonwealth v. Batista<\/a>, 2019 PA Super 291 (Sept. 27, 2019).<\/p>\n

In other news: USA Today: Pennsylvania governor calls for legalization of recreational marijuana<\/a> (Sept. 25, 2019).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cOver the past several years, nearly half of our Sister States and this Commonwealth have legalized medical marijuana. Some States have also repealed their prohibitions against recreational use; Pennsylvania has not. [\u00b6] In this appeal, John Batista makes the novel … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-probable-cause"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39980"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39984,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39980\/revisions\/39984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}