Burchette v. Commonwealth

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that ownership or occupancy of a vehicle where drugs were located was insufficient to establish constructive possession
• holding that ownership or occupancy of a vehicle where drugs were located was insufficient to establish constructive possession
• holding that the defendant’s refusal to give consent for police officers to search the car was not sufficient to prove that he had constructive possession of the contraband in the car
• specifying that a defendant must “have known of the presence, nature, and character of the contraband at the time of . . . ownership”
• noting that presence of defendant's personal possessions in his vehicle not evidence of possession of drugs found in vehicle
• ruling that the handgun and cell phone in the car belonging to the defendant “did not tie him to the drugs [because] . . . [t]hose are items frequently found in vehicles where the owner or occupant has no relation to drug trafficking”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).