{"id":57231,"date":"2024-03-06T07:36:05","date_gmt":"2024-03-06T12:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=57231"},"modified":"2024-03-06T07:36:05","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T12:36:05","slug":"ga-officer-didnt-have-to-distinguish-between-smell-of-mj-hemp-and-cbd-to-have-pc-to-search-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=57231","title":{"rendered":"GA: Officer didn&#8217;t have to distinguish between smell of MJ, hemp, and CBD to have PC to search car"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Under existing precedent, the smell of suspected marijuana couldn\u2019t be distinguished between hemp and CBD, and that was still probable cause for search of the car. <a href=\"https:\/\/efast.gaappeals.us\/download?filingId=f538d85c-b540-4b91-9d2d-5989adbc3f1d\">Coverstone v. State<\/a>, 2024 Ga. App. LEXIS 90 (Mar. 4, 2024).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFirst, Officer Murphy did not improperly prolong the detention by ordering Nguyen to exit the car. \u2026 Second, the officers did not improperly prolong the stop by frisking either Nguyen or Tran. \u2026 The brief frisks were justified by the odor of burned marijuana, the suspected vehicle theft, Nguyen&#8217;s initial refusal to get out of the car, the knife in Nguyen&#8217;s pocket, and reason to believe Nguyen and Tran were engaged in a \u2018common enterprise.\u2019 \u2026 Third, Officer Elhami did not improperly prolong the detention by briefly asking Tran whether he was \u2018on probation or anything.\u2019 \u2026 Fourth, Officer Elhami did not improperly prolong the detention by ordering Tran to exit the car. \u2026 Fifth, the officers did not improperly prolong the detention by asking for Tran&#8217;s identification and searching the car because the officers had at least formed reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct prior to their investigative steps. \u2018Although a mere hunch does not create reasonable suspicion, the level of suspicion the standard requires is considerably less than proof of wrongdoing by a preponderance of the evidence, and obviously less than is necessary for probable cause.\u2019 \u2026 And Nguyen consented to the vehicle search.\u201d United States v. Tran, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 4934 (9th Cir. Mar. 1, 2024).*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Under existing precedent, the smell of suspected marijuana couldn\u2019t be distinguished between hemp and CBD, and that was still probable cause for search of the car. Coverstone v. State, 2024 Ga. App. LEXIS 90 (Mar. 4, 2024). \u201cFirst, Officer Murphy &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=57231\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":[51,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plain-view","category-reasonable-suspicion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57231","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=57231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57232,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57231\/revisions\/57232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}