An appeals court has ruled that the two Atlanta cops who arrested a transgender woman, whom they suspected of carrying cocaine and jaywalking in 2015, were no longer entitled to qualified immunity from her lawsuit.

Ju'zema Goldring, who the cops wrongfully arrested, has spent nearly six months in the Fulton County jail as she could not afford bail. She added that at times she was even put in solitary confinement.

Transgender Woman Jailed After Sand Inside Her Stress Ball Mistaken as Cocaine

According to Reason, the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled last week that the two Atlanta police officers were no longer entitled to qualified immunity from a civil lawsuit filed against them by Ju'zema Goldring for malicious prosecution.

According to Goldring, the officers falsely accused her of jaywalking, and cocaine trafficking after officers found a stress ball in her purse. 

Based on a field test of a powdery substance, the officers believed at the time that the sand inside the stress ball was cocaine. 

Goldring's attorney, Zack Greenamyre, earlier told news outlet NBC 46 that his client was falsely arrested because she never jaywalked, and Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) lab results showed there were no drugs inside the stress ball.

Greenamyre said the charges were not quickly dropped despite the GBI test results. He noted that it took about 4 ½ to 5 months for the case to be dropped.

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More Innocent Victims of False Positives From Drug Field Test Kits

Based on the 11th Circuit's opinion, police officers Vladimir Henry and Juan Restrepo stopped Ju'zema Goldring on October 10, 2015 for allegedly jaywalking in Midtown, Atlanta.

Despite telling them that she was not jaywalking, the police officers still took Goldring to the police station, where they cut open the stress ball they had found in her purse and tested the powdery substance inside using a Nark II field test for drugs.

However, as Reason reported, the drug field test kits manufactured by several companies and used by police departments and prison systems across the country were only using instant color reactions to indicate the presence of certain compounds found in illegal drugs.

The same compounds were also found in dozens of known lawful substances. And although the tests are relatively simple to use, they are still prone to user error, and misinterpretation and the victim could face possible arrest and, worse, be put to jail.

Last year, a college football quarterback in Georgia was arrested after a bird poop on his vehicle tested positive for cocaine. Also, a Florida man was wrongfully jailed in 2017 after his donut glaze was confused with meth based on a field test.

In affirming a lower court ruling, the 11th Circuit held that Henry and Restrepo were not entitled to qualified immunity from Goldring's lawsuit as there was a genuine factual dispute over whether she was jaywalking and whether the field tests returned positive results.

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This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Jess Smith

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