Boyd Crowder
Teem MiCr0B35
File under : Asenine
By Dan Casey [email protected] 981-3423
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 boy’s knapsack. The student is suspended for a year. A sheriff’s 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 wasn’t marijuana. A prosecutor dropped the juvenile court charge because the leaf had field-tested negative three times.
Their son remains out of school — he’s due to return Monday on strict probation. But in the meantime, the events of the past six months have wreaked havoc on the formerly happy-go-lucky boy’s psyche. His parents say he’s withdrawn socially, and is now under the care of a pediatric psychiatrist for panic attacks and depression.
The couple — both are schoolteachers — have filed a federal lawsuit against Bedford County Schools and the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office. It refers to their son only by the initials R.M.B.
It alleges Bedford Middle School Assistant Principal Brian Wilson and school operations chief Frederick “Mac” Duis violated his due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.
“Essentially they kicked him out of school for something they couldn’t prove he did,” said Roanoke attorney Melvin Williams, the Bays’ lawyer.
It also accuses the Bedford County Sheriff’s 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.”
Filed Feb. 3 in U.S. District Court in Lynchburg, the lawsuit doesn’t ask for specific damages. “We intend to see what a jury would say about that,” Williams said.
Bedford Sheriff Mike Brown did not return my phone call Thursday (a woman in his office said he was off work last week). Wilson and Duis each declined to comment, and instead referred me to the school system’s lawyer, Salem attorney Jim Guynn. He’s also representing the sheriff.
Guynn has moved to dismiss the suit for a couple of reasons that we’ll get into below. One argument, he told me, is that under the school board’s anti-drug policies it may not matter whether the leaf was marijuana or not.
Even if the lawsuit is as meritless as he suggests, the case presents a cautionary tale about the current zero-tolerance drug climate in Virginia schools.
Read more:
http://www.roanoke.com/news/columns...cle_67dc2868-0f0a-53c0-96ad-595a88391aa3.html
By Dan Casey [email protected] 981-3423
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 boy’s knapsack. The student is suspended for a year. A sheriff’s 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 wasn’t marijuana. A prosecutor dropped the juvenile court charge because the leaf had field-tested negative three times.
Their son remains out of school — he’s due to return Monday on strict probation. But in the meantime, the events of the past six months have wreaked havoc on the formerly happy-go-lucky boy’s psyche. His parents say he’s withdrawn socially, and is now under the care of a pediatric psychiatrist for panic attacks and depression.
The couple — both are schoolteachers — have filed a federal lawsuit against Bedford County Schools and the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office. It refers to their son only by the initials R.M.B.
It alleges Bedford Middle School Assistant Principal Brian Wilson and school operations chief Frederick “Mac” Duis violated his due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.
“Essentially they kicked him out of school for something they couldn’t prove he did,” said Roanoke attorney Melvin Williams, the Bays’ lawyer.
It also accuses the Bedford County Sheriff’s 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.”
Filed Feb. 3 in U.S. District Court in Lynchburg, the lawsuit doesn’t ask for specific damages. “We intend to see what a jury would say about that,” Williams said.
Bedford Sheriff Mike Brown did not return my phone call Thursday (a woman in his office said he was off work last week). Wilson and Duis each declined to comment, and instead referred me to the school system’s lawyer, Salem attorney Jim Guynn. He’s also representing the sheriff.
Guynn has moved to dismiss the suit for a couple of reasons that we’ll get into below. One argument, he told me, is that under the school board’s anti-drug policies it may not matter whether the leaf was marijuana or not.
Even if the lawsuit is as meritless as he suggests, the case presents a cautionary tale about the current zero-tolerance drug climate in Virginia schools.
Read more:
http://www.roanoke.com/news/columns...cle_67dc2868-0f0a-53c0-96ad-595a88391aa3.html
damn LEO ought to be up on criminal charges for filing after the test showed negative.
