Cotton-Candy Test Jails Dasha Fincher

On New Year's Eve 2016, Monroe County deputies arrested a 43-year-old woman named Dasha Fincher after a disposable field test falsely identified a bag of blue cotton candy as methamphetamine. Unable to pay a $1 million cash bond, Fincher spent 94 days in jail and missed the birth of her twin grandsons before a state crime lab confirmed that the substance was not a drug. Federal Judge Tilman Self later dismissed her lawsuit because the deputies had sovereign immunity, leaving Fincher without compensation for her wrongful incarceration.

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