One Box of Sudafed Over the Line: Florida Woman Arrested for Trying to Relieve Allergy Symptoms

While
shopping with her husband in Quincy, Florida, on July 19, 2010,
Mickey Goodson stopped by a Winn-Dixie drugstore to pick up some
allergy pills. The pharmacist on duty suggested she buy two boxes
of Sudafed, which she did. Thus began Goodson’s entanglement with
the criminal justice system, which featured searches of her car and
home, along with drug charges that were not dropped until September
2011.

According to a lawsuit
that Goodson filed earlier this month, she and her husband were
accosted by Gadsden County sheriff’s deputies as they left the
pharmacy. The deputies confiscated the Sudafed, searched the
couple’s car, and instructed Goodson and her husband to follow them
to the Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office. At the office Deputy
William Buckhalt asked Goodson and her husband if he could search
their home, presumably to verify that they were not using Sudafed
to make methamphetamine. Not without a warrant, they said.
Oh, I’ll get a search warrant,”
Buckhalt replied, according to Goodson’s complaint.

And he did get a warrant, although a judge eventually decided
that it was invalid because Buckhalt had withheld crucial
information from the magistrate who approved it. As deputies served
the warrant later that day, according to the lawsuit, one of them
asked Goodson, “What have you gotten rid of?” To which Goodson
replied, “I don’t know what you are talking about!” According
to Goodson’s complaint, she was handcuffed on her front
porch and charged with “possession of a controlled substance.”
Possessing pseudoephedrine is a crime in Florida if you buy
more than the legal limit or plan to make methamphetamine with
it.

The evidence of such a scheme apparently was limited to the
amount of pseudoephedrine that Goodson bought. Two packages of
24-hour Sudafed, for example, contain 4.8 grams of pseudoephedrine,
which is 1.2 grams more than the
daily limit
imposed by Florida law. Since January 2011, such
purchases have been
automatically blocked
 by a statewide database. At the time
of Goodson’s shopping trip, pharmacists were only required to
keep written logs of pseudoephedrine sales. Still, if Goodson broke
the law by buying more than 3.6 grams of pseudoephedrine in one
day, Winn-Dixie broke the law by selling it to her. The
immediate arrival of sheriff’s deputies nevertheless suggests that
someone at the store called the cops.

In her lawsuit, which seeks “damages in excess of Seventy
Five Thousand Dollars,” Goodson accuses Gadsden County Sheriff
Morris Young, Buckhalt, and a third deputy of false arrest and
various Fourth Amendment violations. Is her story plausible? Sadly,
yes. Goodson would not be the first innocent person who was

treated like a criminal
for buying what the government deems an
excessive number of allergy pills.

[via Police State
USA
]