Welcome back to Florida Criminal Law TV. On our casual Friday short series answering viewer and user questions, I have another one for you and I have to tell you, I really appreciate all of you who have written in and talked to me about the show, asked me questions about criminal law. It has been a lot of fun. Probably the favorite thing I do is educating people about the criminal law because most, not all, of the people that we represent have no experience with the criminal justice system. And even when people have a prior record and they have been to court for it, they do not understand it from the perspective of a criminal defense lawyer, which can often lead people stepping on one of those major bombs that we call the landmines through the minefield that is Florida criminal law.
What Will Happen if I Fail My Drug Test While on Pre-Trial Release?
So, let’s roll on over to our next question where a viewer asked, “What will happen if I fail my drug test while on pre-trial release?” Now, this is something that I have been asked multiple times in my office, on the phone, clients sending email questions. What will happen if I fail my drug test on pre-trial release? And my response has been consistent for a long time. What do you think? I will give you three guesses and the first two do not count. And you already know the answer. If you fail a drug test on pre-trial release, the bond will be revoked and you will go to jail until your case is resolved. So, my advice is very simple. If you are out of jail and you are on bond, do not do anything that will violate your bond conditions because bonds contain basically two components.
Bond Conditions
Component number one is going to be the dollar amount for each count. And once that is determined and someone gets a bond and they make a bond, there is also often special conditions of bond. In a domestic, it is going to be no violent contact. In a DUI case, it may be no alcohol or drugs. And in most cases, there is a requirement, no illegal drugs as part of the bond conditions.If it is a sex case, there may be a requirement to wear a GPS monitor if it was for traveling to meet a minor. If it is a child pornography case or if child pornography is attached as a count to a traveling case, then quite often, there is a special bond condition of no usage of the internet.
How a Lawyer Can Help
Now, we usually file motions in that scenario pointing out the obvious that, “Hey, it is the 21st century, people need access to the internet, whether it is to look for a job to communicate with family or whatever, cannot we put a Net Nanny on it?” So, with each of the special conditions of pre-trial release there may be an objection you have with it. Let’s say for example that you are prescribed medical marijuana for PTSD. Well, you do not want to be set up to where you are positive for THC and your pretrial release supervisor does not know that you have a valid prescription in Florida because there is a lack of communication. You don’t want to just think “Hey, everything is fine, I have the script” and the next thing you know, there is a knock at the door or you are visited at work and you are buckled up and taken to jail for violating pretrial release.
So, the short answer is it will result in a bond revocation but there may be some ways around it if your lawyer and the legal team filed the right pleadings and that has to be handled on a case by case basis.
Disclaimer: This article is in response to questions frequently asked of Mr. Cobb and is a slightly edited dictation transcript. Just like talk to text on your smartphone, there may be misspelled words or sentence fragments.
