Flour Power

Shaker Skywind passed on this story with the question, “So what do you think—should she sue?”

When college freshman Janet Lee packed her bags for a Christmas trip home two years ago, her luggage contained three condoms filled with flour — devices that she and some friends made as a joke.

Philadelphia International Airport screeners found the condoms, and their initial tests showed they contained drugs. The Bryn Mawr College student was arrested on drug trafficking charges and jailed. Three weeks later, she was released after a lab test backed her story, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Thursday…

Airport screeners found the condoms filled with white powder in Lee’s checked luggage shortly before she was to board a plane to Los Angeles to visit her family. She said she told city police they were filled with flour. She said she made them as a joke and would squeeze them to relieve stress.

Police told her a field test showed that the powder contained opium and cocaine, according to the Inquirer. A lab test later proved the substance was flour — and prosecutors dropped the charges, the newspaper reported.

Lee’s lawyers, former prosecutors David Oh and Jeremy Ibrahim, say that either the field test was faulty or someone fixed the results.

Lee has now filed a federal lawsuit against city police, seeking damages for pain and suffering, financial loss, and emotional distress.

Having given it some thought, I think anyone who’s been held in jail for three weeks on half a million dollars bond and threatened with a 20-year prison sentence, because the police lab made a pretty serious error, has a reason to sue. But at the same time, I don’t buy the condoms-cum-stressball story for a second, nor do I believe that someone smart enough for Bryn Mawr (or the Piddly Diddly Vocational School of Basket Weaving, for that matter) is naïve enough to have overlooked the potential drama the items could have caused. I have this sneaking suspicion that Lee thought she could sneak them past airport security and be left with a good story to tell about how lousy airport security is.

Even taking her at her word, however, it was a pretty dumb maneuver. Sometimes there are consequences for dumb maneuvers. Hers were exacerbated by the faulty test. If it was a genuine error on the part of the police, maybe she ought to just chalk it up to a lesson learned about packing bizarre pseudo-contraband. If the test was manipulated, I lean toward suing. Of course, I don’t know that there’s any way to prove that, unless she sues.

What do you think?