Denver criminal defense attorney Doug Richards discusses which cases of cocaine and marijuana possession would be taken to federal court.

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If you get arrested with cocaine in your pocket, it’s very unlikely that it’s going to be an amount that the federal government is interested in prosecuting you for. If it’s something that you can fit into your pocket, most likely it’s something that would be a state case. A federal crime would be committed if you’re in possession of it, but more likely they’d be getting involved if it’s somewhere over a kilo of cocaine. Many pounds of marijuana. The federal government has a threshold that’s sort of unwritten, I suppose. It may be written on the internal guidelines–it was when I was a prosecutor–of what they’ll take as far as a federal prosecution instead of declining it and telling the agent to go state.