[footfootfoot]

Nice one!

Bird-watcher wrongly arrested for possession of pot had sage in backpack

Sheriff's Deputy Dominic Raimondi, 51, mistook Brown's sage for marijuana, then searched her car and found more. His field kit said the sage — purchased at an airport gift shop in Albuquerque, N.M. — tested positive for marijuana.

He did not arrest her that day in March 2009, but sent the 50 grams of "contraband" to the crime lab for a more definitive test.

Assistant State Attorney Mark Horn ordered Brown's arrest without having the sage tested, court records show.

Three months later, Raimondi showed up at the Massage Envy in Weston where Brown works and took her away in handcuffs.

"They arrested me in front of my customers, my boss, my co-workers," Brown said. She later was subjected to a body cavity search, a strip search and an overnight stay in jail.

A month later, Brown's attorney discovered that the sage had never been tested at the Broward Sheriff's Office crime lab.

"When I found out they didn't do a lab test, I was outraged," said her Miami attorney, Bill Ullman. "I raised hell about that."

On July 23, 2009, Ullman demanded that the sage be tested.

The lab test concluded that the dried sage was not marijuana at all.

The criminal charges were dropped.

Ullman said one apologetic prosecutor called him to say it was "scary" someone could be arrested under such circumstances.

"Our policy is to make sure the evidence is tested at the very least before trial," said Ron Ishoy, spokesman for the Broward State Attorney's Office. "Looking back now at this specific police report, it would have been the better practice to test the evidence before filing a formal charge."

Field tests are unreliable and can give a false positive, said John Kelly, a forensic drug test expert based in Washington, D.C.

Brown filed a civil lawsuit claiming public humiliation, mental pain and suffering. The suit accuses the Broward State Attorney's Office of negligence and malicious prosecution.

Circuit Judge John Bowman dismissed the case in January, saying prosecutors are given immunity from lawsuits in the course of doing their jobs.