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Criminal Law Keyed to Capers
Harbison v. State
Citation:
302 Ark. 315, 790 S.W.2d 146 (Ark. 1990)Facts
A motion was made to dismiss the cocaine charge on the ground that the amount in the brown bottle was insufficient to give rise to a charge of possession. Testimony of two experts from the state crime laboratory was taken. A drug chemist testified that he identified a substance found inside two plastic drinking straws as being a “trace amount” of cocaine “residue” too small to weigh with state crime laboratory equipment which could weigh nothing smaller than one milligram. From colloquy among the court and counsel, it is apparent that the two straws were unrelated to the case against Harbison but had to do with the other defendant.The laboratory’s chief toxicologist then testified that the amount found in the two straws was not sufficient to have any effect on the “human system” and a drug user would not attempt to use it because it “would not be an amount that someone would be interested in trying to use.
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