GAINESVILLE, GA – A Georgia woman was held in jail for one month after officers mistook SpaghettiOs pasta for methamphetamine, according to an article published on VICE magazine.
On July 2, 22-year-old Ashley Gabrielle Huff was detained at a traffic stop, and the officer, writes VICE, found a spoon with a “suspicious residue” in Huff’s car.
Despite Huff’s immediate explanation the substance was nothing more than SpaghettiOs, the officer’s suspicion deepened when he found a glass pipe in her bag. A field test was conducted on the spoon, and the officer claimed it tested positive for methamphetamine. Huff was arrested and charged with drug possession, VICE reported.
Field tests are notoriously unreliable, noted VICE, citing a 2016 investigation by ProPublica which revealed that over 100,000 people across the U.S. are falsely convicted based on these inaccurate tests.
For example, a similar case occurred when officers identified handmade soap as cocaine. In Huff’s case, the field test was accepted without scrutiny—meaning she was jailed immediately, according to VICE.
Dr. Carl Hart, a neuroscientist at Columbia University and a vocal critic of the war on drugs, has called for reforms in drug testing procedures.
“The use of these faulty field tests is a symptom of a larger problem in our justice system,” Hart said to Vice, adding, “They disproportionately affect the poor and minorities, who often don’t have the resources to fight back.”
Once arrested, Huff was unable to afford bail and was forced to remain in jail for two weeks while awaiting trial, a common scenario for many Americans caught up in the legal system, according to VICE.
VICE wrote Huff’s case caught another turn when she missed a court date, resulting in her being re-incarcerated.
“As a testament to how f***** the U.S. legal system is, Huff was proven to be innocent,” said Luis Prada, a topical writer at VICE, adding, “Yet, while she was jailed, she first considered taking a plea deal just so she could get out of jail, which would have saddled her with a criminal record and affected her for the rest of her life.”
While Huff remained in jail, lab tests were conducted on the substance found on her spoon. And, unlike the field test, the lab’s analysis proved Huff’s claim correct: the residue was not methamphetamine—it was, in fact, SpaghettiOs, just as she had said from the beginning, reported Vice.
