benjipwns
Banned
http://www.roanoke.com/news/columns...cle_67dc2868-0f0a-53c0-96ad-595a88391aa3.html
Please close the thread if one on this topic already exists. Thank you and have a good day.
Unless you're Steve Youngblood.
At first blush it sounds like an open-and-shut school disciplinary matter in a zero-tolerance age:
Some schoolchildren claim another student bragged about having marijuana. They inform school administrators. An assistant principal finds a leaf and a lighter in the boys knapsack. The student is suspended for a year. A sheriffs deputy files marijuana possession charges in juvenile court.
All of the above and more happened last September to the 11-year-old son of Bedford County residents Bruce and Linda Bays. He was a sixth-grader in the gifted-and-talented program at Bedford Middle School.
There was only one problem: Months after the fact, the couple learned the substance wasnt marijuana. A prosecutor dropped the juvenile court charge because the leaf had field-tested negative three times.
Their son remains out of school hes due to return Monday on strict probation.
It also accuses the Bedford County Sheriffs Office of malicious prosecution, because Deputy M.M. Calohan, a school resource officer, filed marijuana possession charges against the boy despite field tests that indicated otherwise.
The field test came back not inconclusive, but negative, Williams said. Yet she went to a magistrate and swore he possessed marijuana at school.
...
[School lawyer] Guynn has moved to dismiss the suit for a couple of reasons that well get into below. One argument, he told me, is that under the school boards anti-drug policies it may not matter whether the leaf was marijuana or not.
The events leading up the boys 364-day suspension began Sept. 22. The Bays said theyre still unclear about how or why school officials targeted their son because theyve heard three different stories about that.
We know they relied on tips that after the fact turn out to be less than reliable, Williams said.
One was that R.M.B. was showing off the leaf on the school bus (which also transports Liberty High students) that day. The second was that it happened in a school bathroom. The third is that it occurred inside his homeroom class.
Word apparently made it through the school grapevine to Wilson, who took the Bays son out of gym class that day, along with his knapsack, which had been in an unsecured gym locker. They went to Wilsons office.
There, Linda Bays said, Wilson asked their son if he had anything he shouldnt have. He said, No. 
Wilson then asked the boy to empty his knapsack. As their son did, the assistant principal personally unzipped a small pouch on the packs exterior, and found a crumpled leaf and a lighter. He summoned a school resource officer, Bedford County Sheriffs Deputy M.M. Calohan
Next, Wilson called Linda Bays at work. Shes a teacher at Stewartsville Elementary School.
He told me [her son] had been seen in the bathroom with a marijuana leaf and lighter and that I needed to come to [Bedford Middle School] quickly, Linda said. She called her husband (a retired schoolteacher in both Bedford and Pittsylvania counties) and they met in Wilsons office.
He had us sit down and he proceeded to tell us [our son] had been seen in the classroom with a lighter and a leaf, Linda said. Wilson added that their son told several students that we had marijuana growing in our back yard and that his dad knew about it and didnt care, Linda said.
The assistant principal also told the couple that their son had told Wilson a high-schooler on the bus had given him the leaf. (The couple said their son has told them repeatedly he has no idea how the leaf got in his backpack, that he didnt know it was there, and that he never showed it off to anyone.)
I asked, Can I see the leaf? and the deputy said, No, its already in evidence, Linda told me. We have never seen the leaf. Hes been out of school for six months.
The boy was immediately suspended for 10 days pending an administrative hearing. That happened before Duis on Sept. 29 at the Bedford Science and Technology Center.
Wilson was there but the deputy was not, the Bays said. In the meantime theyd hired Bedford attorney Emily Sitzler to represent their son for that hearing and his later one in juvenile court. They paid her $1,500. (She didnt return my phone call Thursday.)
Bruce Bays said: During the hearing I asked Wilson, What about the field test on the marijuana leaf? 
The assistant principal hemmed and hawed and finally he got around to it and said Im not qualified to interpret the results of the field test, Bruce Bays said.
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The juvenile court hearing happened late in November. When the Bays got there, Sitzler informed them that the commonwealth was going to ask for a continuance because they had neglected to send the leaf off to a state lab for testing.
Linda Bays told Sitzler they wouldnt agree to a continuance. Sitzler went back to the prosecutor, and she came back and said they were going to drop the charge. Thats when the Bays learned the leaf had field-tested negative three times.
The lawyer said the assistant commonwealths attorney told her they were going to have problems with this case anyway, Linda Bays told me.
After that, I immediately sent a letter to Dr. Duis requesting a new hearing, Linda Bays told me. His response: The court system and the school system were two different entities.
The school system also required the boy be evaluated for substance abuse problems. So the Bays took him to his longtime pediatrician in Lynchburg, who referred them to a pediatric psychiatrist.
...
But their son will remain on strict probation until next September, under the terms of the original suspension letter. A minor infraction could get him kicked out again.
I spoke about this case Thursday with the school boards and the sheriffs attorney, Jim Guynn. He said hes filed motions to dismiss the malicious prosecution claim against the sheriffs deputy because its in the wrong court.
Malicious prosecution is a state claim, Guynn told me. If you want to make a malicious prosecution claim you need to be in state court. But beyond that, he argued, the deputys filing of the juvenile court charge against R.M.B was not malicious. Thats because she visually identified the leaf as marijuana, Guynn said.
The young man was telling people on the bus that he had marijuana that was given to him by someone from the high school, Guynn told me. The attorney added the leaf was not dried, as marijuana typically is, but that it was a little sprig that looked to Guynn exactly like a photo of a marijuana leaf he found on the Internet.
And under the school systems anti-drug policy it may not matter whether the leaf was actually marijuana or a similar-looking leaf, such as from a Japanese maple tree.
Thats because the policy treats lookalike and imitation drugs the same as the real thing. Heres what it says:
The unlawful manufacture, distribution, dispensation, possession, use or being under the influence of alcohol, anabolic steroids, or any narcotic drug, hallucinogenic drug, amphetamine, barbiturate, marijuana or other controlled substance [or] imitation controlled substances or drug paraphernalia while on school property, while going to and from school, or while engaged in or attending any school-sponsored or school approved activity or event, is prohibited, and will result in an automatic recommendation of expulsion.
Guynn called that a pretty standard rule across the commonwealth.
Its the same punishment and exactly the same result whether the leaf was marijuana or not, he said. For that reason, the Bays due-process claim should be tossed out, too, Guynn said.
Williams countered: If the school argues now that they were justified in suspending him for possession of lookalike marijuana, thats disingenuous because theyve never argued that prior to the suit being filed.
Guynn responded: I understand what hes saying. I disagree with that.
Please close the thread if one on this topic already exists. Thank you and have a good day.
Unless you're Steve Youngblood.
