Drug Induced Homicide Defense Toolkit
2. Decisions not requiring physical presence Some courts have held or implied that both users need not be physically present for the joint-user defense to apply. These jurisdictions still require simultaneous acquisition of the substance but, citing the principles of constructive possession, hold that a person can acquire possession of an item without being physically present at the point of sale. In Minnesota v. Carithers,178 for example, the court held that “[i]f a husband and wife jointly acquire the drug, each spouse has constructive possession from the moment of acquisition, whether or not both are physically present at the transaction.”179 In Carithers, the Minnesota Supreme Court considered a consolidated appeal of two cases involving
Mancuso and traveled with him to acquire the cocaine jointly, intending only to share it together.”); People v. Coots, 968 N.E.2d 1151, 1158 (Ill. Ct. App. 2012) (joining the courts that “have held that the fact that two or more people have paid for drugs will not prevent one of them from being guilty of delivery or distribution—or intent to deliver or distribute—if he alone obtains the drugs at a separate location and then returns to share their use with his co-purchasers.”); State v. Greene, 592 N.W.2d 24, 30 (Iowa 1999) (declining to apply the joint-user “rationale where both owners did not actively and equally participate in the purchase of the drugs, even though the drugs were acquired for the personal use of the joint owners.”); United States v. Washington, 41 F.3d 917, 920 (4th Cir. 1994) (“[A] defendant who purchases a drug and shares it with a friend has ‘distributed’ the drug even though the purchase was part of a joint venture to use drugs.”); State v. Shell, 501 S.W.3d 22, 29 (Mo. Ct. App. 2016) (rejecting a joint-user argument where, although “Decedent requested that Defendant purchase the heroin for both men, Defendant was the one who, on his own, purchased the heroin from his drug dealer with his own money and delivered it to Decedent.”). 178
State v. Carithers, 490 N.W.2d 620 (Minn. 1992).
179
Carithers, 490 N.W.2d at 622.
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