Soap, not cocaine, lands pair of PA drug suspects in prison for a month

Two New Yorkers were arrested on cocaine-trafficking charges and thrown in Lehigh County Prison last month after a Pennsylvania state trooper conducted a failed field test on their allegedly handmade soap during a traffic stop. stopped their car for going 5 miles over the limit

Nearly a month later, a state police lab test of the soap came back clean and the drug suspects were released.

Now, 26-year-old Annadel Cruz and 30-year-old Alexander Bernstein are saying that the trooper might have been dirty.

"I think it is a nice car with out-of-state plates and a Hispanic female behind the wheel,” said attorney Josh Karoly, who represents Bernstein. "If it was me driving that car, this wouldn't have happened."

The trooper reportedly stopped Cruz for driving 5 miles over the speed limit and hugging the lane. The trooper said he smelled marijuana and Cruz consented to let the trooper search her car. During the search, he found the plastic-wrapped homemade soap in the trunk.

Cruz and Bernstein believe that the trooper profiled them and then screwed up the field test.

"After this, everyone should pause about jumping to conclusions when a field test is said to be positive by law enforcement,” said Cruz's attorney, Robert Goldman. “There are people going to jail on high bail amounts based upon these field tests."

Karoly said the field test either didn't happen or it was botched.

"A young man spent a month in jail, spent a substantial amount of money to get out of jail and missed Thanksgiving with his 17-month-old son," he said. "To do that on a field test, we better be darn sure that these field tests are accurate."

According to the attorneys, they are not planning civil litigation.

"We are so cynical that we don't believe people," Karoly said. "We don't give people the benefit of the doubt."

[The Morning Call]