A cocaine possession charge leveled against a 22-year-old Haines man on Sept. 26 was dropped by prosecutors days later due to a lack of evidence.
Dennim Hagwood was charged in state court last week after border personnel found a small plastic bag of cocaine under the front passenger seat of Hagwood’s truck when he tried to enter the United States from Canada around 6:45 p.m.
Assistant district attorney Amy Paige said her decision to dismiss the charge against Hagwood hinged on the fact that he wasn’t in the vehicle alone: a 24-year-old man was riding in the passenger seat.
Both men denied the cocaine was theirs, according to court documents.
“I didn’t have sufficient evidence as to who it belonged to in the car,” Paige said. “There were two people in the car. There was no evidence if it belonged to one person or the other.”
The fact that Hagwood was the registered vehicle owner and was driving is not enough to establish possession in court, Paige said.
For example, if someone gave you a ride and there were drugs in the car, just being in the car is not sufficient to prove possession, Paige said. Or, looking at it from an ownership angle, if you own a home but unknowingly rent it out to people who maintain a meth house there. “If I have no idea what is going on, I haven’t possessed it by virtue of ownership of the house,” Paige said.
When asked whether this meant people could avoid prosecution for bringing drugs through the border as long as there were more than one person in the car and the drugs weren’t physically on either person, Paige declined to respond to the question.
According to court documents, the Department of Homeland Security Investigations declined to prosecute the case.
Officer Ryan Rutland from the Haines Borough Police Department arrived on scene and arrested Hagwood. Interim police chief Robert Griffiths said this week the district attorney’s office decided to drop the fourth-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance charge “independently.”
Frank Russo, the deputy criminal chief for the U.S. Attorney’s Office who supervises all federal drug cases in Alaska, said his office wasn’t contacted about the case, to his knowledge. Russo said the federal prosecutors don’t usually deal with personal use amounts.
“Those are typically referred for state prosecution,” he said. Russo has been supervising federal drug cases in Alaska for 12 years.
According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website, “CBP has a zero-tolerance policy on illegal drugs. Any type, in any amount may result in serious fines, seizure of vehicle, federal record and/or imprisonment.”
The federal decision not to prosecute the local case contrasts starkly with former border policy that resulted in the seizure of cars and boats at border crossings, including in Haines and Skagway.