Assault & Battery Pennsylvania, Disorderly Conduct, Simple Assault, Drug Paraphernalia.

[cmhawkins]

On Friday April 29th, 2011 my neighbors in the apartment behind me got into a fight. The police were called. I was a witness so as I was waiting to talk to the police, my boyfriend didn't want me talking to them so he got mad at me. After I was done talking to the police I went inside my apartment and my boyfriend got snappy with me. I threw a shoe at him. He came at me and tried to hit me. I pushed him and said go ahead hit me. He then put his hands around my throat. When he let go, I bit him and ran outside. The police were still outside dealing with the neighbors when they came up to me and asked what was going on. I told them. They asked me what I wanted to do. I said to let it go. Then they saw I left a mark on my boyfriend from where I bit him and they arrested us both. I had no shoes on, they didn't even let me get my shoes. Then they went into my house. My boyfriends ID was in a cabinet. When they went into the cabinet to get his ID they found our bong. Which we do not smoke out of. We just sort of have it because it cost a lot of money and we didn't want to throw it away. We kept it as sort of a memorabilia. When we went to jail, they tested the bong and found residue in it even though we haven't smoked out of it in a long time.
The next day, the judge didn't want to do his job so he left his court and said he wouldn't be back until 5pm. The police called the PA District Attorney and had us released and spend the weekend apart with no contact. We have no formal paperwork as of yet. We were charged with simple assault (which we are not pressing charges against each other and the police never took statements from us while we were in jail they just left us there for 14 hours) drug paraphernalia with the intent to smoke marijuana, (which there are no drugs in our system so they can't prove we smoked out of it) and I believe, not entirely sure, disorderly conduct (which I don't know where that came from because the fight was in our apartment, we didn't resist arrest or fight the cops). I'm not sure what to look for here and I can't afford a lawyer. I plan on calling a legal aid on Monday to get advice. I'd like some advice on what to do here.

 

[mightymoose]

Here in California your little altercation would have been characterized as domestic violence. If you only have a simple assault charge then you are lucky.
Their entry into the house isn't necessarily wrong- assuming they were there to document the crime scene (take photos).
They had no business whatsoever opening the cabinet UNLESS either you or your boyfriend gave them permission to do so in order to retrieve the ID. If that was the case then you are pretty much hosed with the discovery of the bong. If they didn't have permission to get into that cabinet then you can make that go away. Your state laws might distinguish a "pipe" from "paraphernalia" depending upon whether or not there is any marijuana residue in the bong. Whether or not you actually smoked from it, you were in possession of it with the residue. That is all that matters.

If neither of you were served an order from the court compelling you to stay away from the other then you are under no obligation to do so. The police do not have the authority to order you to stay away. Only a judge can do that. Besides, if it is only a simple assault charge and not a domestic violence charge then there is even less reason to separate.

If neither of you are pressing charges against the other for the assault then you are home free. In fact, absent the domestic violence charge, I am not sure why you were arrested to begin with. If it actually is a domestic violence charge then the option to prosecute will be excercised by the DA.

When you go back to court each of you need to make it clear that you don't which ot pursue prosecution of the other and request the services of the public defender. The assault charge should go away if neither of you pursue it, and I would bet the discovery of the bong can be put in a questionable light that will make it go away as well.

Again, absent permission from either of you to open the cabinets, the police needed a warrant to do so. I would bet that they asked where the boyfriend's ID was and he told them, which they will claim was permission.

I'm willing to bet that you can get all of this to go away.