This story isn’t recent, but I’m going to mention it anyway because it’s a good example of why you should never consent to a search by police, even if you “have nothing to hide.” (It is also true that I noticed the date only after writing half the article, but I stand by my decision anyway).

According to the Gainesville Times (free sub. required), 23-year-old Ashley Huff was arrested after a “routine traffic stop” in July 2014 when police found “suspicious residue” on a spoon in her purse. The question you should instantly be asking, of course, is why police were rooting around in someone’s purse during a routine traffic stop.

They apparently stopped the vehicle for a “tag light violation,” and even assuming that was legitimate, by itself it wouldn’t have justified a search. Vehicle searches don’t require a warrant, but they do require probable cause or at least “reasonable suspicion” to believe someone inside may be armed and dangerous (which would justify a pat-down). The “plain view” exception (or its more ridiculous cousin, “plain smell“) may also apply. But neither Times article mentions any facts that would justify any of this. The officer described Huff as “nervous” and claimed she had “sores on her face, arms, and legs.” I don’t see any sores in her mugshot photo, but regardless, being nervous and having “sores” is hardly probable cause. But this didn’t matter, because the officer got consent to search the vehicle. (It’s not clear from whom; the article says it was Huff’s vehicle but that she was a “passenger.”)

But justification to search the vehicle doesn’t automatically mean justification to search closed containers inside it, and that’s where an officer found the telltale spoon: inside a purse or bag with “Ashley” printed on it. But again, there are no facts suggesting there might have been a valid reason to search that container. The name “Ashley” would be pretty solid evidence it belonged to her, but not cause to look inside—which distinguishes this case from others we’ve considered. See “Bag Marked ‘Bag Full of Drugs’ Allegedly Full of Drugs” (Feb. 5, 2020). So presumably, she consented to this search as well. If so, she shouldn’t have.

Inside the bag the officer found a “glass smoking device,” though no further details of this device were provided. It’s still illegal to smoke pot in Georgia, but Huff wasn’t charged for that. The charges stemmed from the officer’s inspecction of another item in the bag, namely a metal spoon. According to the officer, the bowl of this spoon contained a “clear, crystal-like substance.” Huff consistently disputed this, telling the officer even at the time that the substance was not clear or crystal-like—it was “orange SpaghettiOs spaghetti sauce” residue.

Huff explained that she had been eating SpaghettiOs out of a can, and “just threw the spoon in my purse because I had borrowed it [and the can] from a friend.” But the officer found this implausible. “I found it strange,” he wrote in the police report, “that she would eat SpaghettiOs with a metal spoon while riding in a vehicle, and then put the spoon back in a bag.” He did not explain where he obtained the expertise in human mobile-eating practices to enable him to make a reasonable judgment on this point. If he thought the “smoking device” suggested possible meth use, he presumably would have tested that instead of or at least in addition to the spoon, but he apparently didn’t. So his observations of the spoon alone led him to do a “field test.” According to the officer, “the crystal-like substance on the spoon showed a positive indication for methamphetamine.”

Based on this evidence, Hall was arrested and charged with possession of methamphetamine. She then seems to have tried a diversion program for a month (one article mentions the “Hall County Drug Court”) but missed an appointment or a hearing and was sent back to jail. She couldn’t make the bond payment and so spent the next six weeks or so in jail, still maintaining her innocence. But on September 18, the district attorney’s office dismissed the charge. They had just received the state crime lab’s report on the suspicious residue, they said. It was indeed SpaghettiOs.

Well, it doesn’t actually say the crime lab had a specific test for SpaghettiO residue, just that “the Crime Lab report showed no controlled substances on the spoon submitted for testing.” But the only other evidence regarding the mysterious substance is Hall’s testimony, so I’m okay with that conclusion.

Huff, who has no criminal record, lost her job when she was incarcerated. The proximate cause of that might have been missing a hearing, and that’s on her, but none of this would have been necessary had an officer not somehow mistaken SpaghettiO sauce for crystal meth. Maybe more to the point, it wouldn’t have happened if they had just said “no thank you” when an officer asked for consent to search. So do that, even if you have nothing (except maybe unusual vehicular eating practices) to hide.