Innocent man jailed for 82 days and loses jobs for bringing three jars of honey back to US

https://news.yahoo.com/innocent-man-jailed-82-days-195437988.html

Lynh Bui
,The Independent•August 25, 2019
Leon Haughton likes honey in his tea.

Which is why during his Christmas visit to relatives in Jamaica, he made his regular stop and bought three bottles from a favourite roadside stand before heading home to Maryland.

It was a routine purchase for him until he landed at the airport in Baltimore.

US customs officers detained Mr Haughton and police arrested him, accusing him of smuggling in not honey, but liquid methamphetamine.

Mr Haughton spent nearly three months in jail before all charges were dropped and two rounds of law enforcement lab tests showed no controlled substances in the bottles.

By then, Mr Haughton, who according to his lawyer had no criminal record, had lost both of his jobs as a cleaner and a construction worker.

“They messed up my life,” Mr Haughton said. “I want the world to know that the system is not right. If I didn’t have strong people around me, they would probably leave me in jail. You’re lost in the system.”

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Twenty days after his arrest, a state police lab test looking for drugs in the bottles came up negative.

Yet the 45-year-old father sat behind bars for two more months before the last of the charges were dropped after a second all-clear in a federal lab test.

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Mr Haughton said he’s been trying to get his life back in order. He has a job driving a bread truck after losing his previous jobs while in jail.

And his children are trying to improve their grades after the trauma of his disappearance affected their schoolwork.

Mr Haughton says he is constantly trying to reassure his children – one of whom burst into tears when Mr Haughton came home because she didn’t recognise her father – that he isn’t going to vanish again.

But some scars, Mr Haughton said, won’t go away.

“I’m scared to even travel right now,” he said. “You’re innocent, and you can end up in jail.”