Alcohol & Drugs: MIP, MIC, Intoxication distribution of cocaine

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I am in Lynchburg, Va. My son has been charged with distribution of cocaine. When the court date came up, the only thing we knew was that an officer said he came to my sons house and tooted the horn and he said my son came out and sold him a bag for $l00 cash. My sons denies this. The officer was alone and has no pictures of this so-called transaction or any witnesses. I failed to mention that my son works for us and lives in the house next door to our shop. At 5:47p.m. in the evening, when this transaction supposedly took place, my son would have been at work. It seems it is my son's word against the officers. The lawyer told the judge these things, that my son has a clean record, never been picked up for anything. The judge found him guilty and sent him back for a drug test. He tested positive for smoking marajuana, so now he is in jail. They say we can't get a bond because he was sent home on his own recognisance and he broke the bond by smoking the marajuana. The lawyer says his sentencing isn't until October 25, 2002 and he has to stay in jail until then, unless the court changes the sentencing date. My question is, Why can't we get a bond until the sentencing date? My son wants to take an appeal on the charges of distributing because he emphatically says he is innocent. My son said someone at the jail told him that you show up to court on the bond when he was arrested, that that is the only requirement on that bond. Can you tell me if that is right or not? I am a mother in a predicament and worried about this.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

To begin, if your son was supposed to be at work during that time, the simple question is "was your son at work during the time that the police officer states that your son sold him cocaine?" If so, it would be so easy for your son to produce a witness who says your son was at work that day. What did your son tell you?

I don't want to sound like the bad guy and hope that I am not. Whether your son was at work should have been known by you long ago. When someone tells me "Mr. X would have been at place B" I think that I am not quite being told the truth since a confident person would have said "Mr. X was at place B." The first manner suggests that you are challenging me to prove a fact that you know or don't know to be true and are suggesting that it must be true if it can't be proven. Additionally, if he smoked marijuana while out on bond then this was yet another very, very poor decision made by your son.

You don't need videotape to be convicted. All one needs to do is the crime -- distribution of cocaine -- to be convicted. For some reason the court was very convinced that your son was not telling the truth -- perhaps his explanation might be why. I am NOT telling you that he is a liar or that he might be innocent, just telling you that all this stuff about bond really is secondary to the issue you might be more concerned with -- whether or not your son's conviction will be incarcerated for a significant period of time and whether he can make better life decisions and have better perspective.