Jolly's Court Case Starts Today

[MadScientist]

If he gets a decent lawyer, he should be able to beat this easily. It's not really possible for a 20 ounce bottle to contain 200g of codeine considering that 20 fluid ounces of the most potent prescription codeine cough syrup available would only contain about 140g of codeine. I don't think Jolly and his associates are clever enough to take codeine laced-cough syrup and somehow distill it enough to be more concentrated... why would they want to anyway?

What likely happened is that the arresting officer estimated about 200g of fluid (that's about a half-full 20 ounce bottle), and tried to push a misdemeanor possession charge into a felony "intent to distribute" charge, and that sort of thing frequently results in the case getting thrown out in court.

I'm guessing Jolly beats this or ends up on a misdemeanor possession charge, and probably just ends up in the NFL substance abuse programe assuming he is appropriately conciliatory before the feet of Goodell.

That's the gist of it, Lurk.

This is where celebrity works against you. If this was just 3 guys, the cops would have written a minor ticket and hauled one to 3 of 'em off to jail. After a night in the can, that would've been the end of the case.

When a prosecutor "over-charges" like this, most judges will throw the case out on the facts. there is NO way this is an "intent to ditribute' case. What was Jolly gonna do, sell sips of his lean for a buck a hit?

Part of the reason for over-charging is that the prosecutor wants a plea to a lesser charge that is not a slam-dunk. It saves a lot of time and effort if the defendant pleas to the reasonable charge.

In this case the over-charge was way over the top, and the real penalty for pleading guilty to a lesser charge is does not come from the courts, but from the NFL. Jolly has no choice to fight it fully. One thing I don't know about the legal process is if he can be found guilty to a lesser charge by the judge or jury without a plea bargain.

[SnakeLH2006]

We talking bout cough syrup, not the game. We talking bout cough syrup, I know it's important, but we talking bout cough syrup man. We ain't talking bout the game, we talking bout cough syrup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frsId3goYYE

[pbmax]

Wonder if they see they have a crappy case and want to try to strike a plea?

The piece doesn't give an indication otherwise, so we might need to take the Prosecutor at face value. He said the calendar is full of more serious crimes.

[Patler]

Wonder if they see they have a crappy case and want to try to strike a plea?

The piece doesn't give an indication otherwise, so we might need to take the Prosecutor at face value. He said the calendar is full of more serious crimes.

One article said they had a number of defendants in jail awaiting trial, and they moved those ahead of cases with defendants who are out on bail.