"You don't know what you have until it's gone" is classic relationship advice. But is "I didn't know what I had until it was seized" a classic defense to drug charges? Consider the facts of State v. Hall. An officer stopped the defendant's car for a traffic violation. The traffic stop led to a search of the car, which led to the discovery of two green pills that the officer suspected contained ecstasy. The SBI determined that they contained both ecstasy and ketamine, and the defendant was charged with, and convicted of, possession of both controlled substances. Apparently, neither the officer nor the prosecutor contended that the defendant knew the pills contained ketamine. As the prosecutor put it, "I believe she knew she had a controlled substance, not the identity of the controlled substance." Whether the defendant could be convicted of possessing ketamine without knowing that she possessed ketamine wasn't the precise issue on appeal in Hall -- but could she? As the Hall court noted, to sustain a conviction for possession of a controlled substance, the state must prove that the defendant "knowingly" possessed such a substance. Standing alone, this language at least suggests the viability of an "I didn't know what I had" defense. But courts in North Carolina and elsewhere have generally required only that the defendant knew that the substance she possessed was controlled, not that she knew the exact nature of the substance. See, e.g., State v. Mendez, 42 N.C. App. 141 (1979) (holding that a [...]
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