If you dump a little liquid methamphetamine into a bottle of soda, Wyoming law enforcement officers consider the whole bottle to be methamphetamine, according to state law and court documents in the case of a Gillette woman now facing a felony.
Dusty Lynn Legerski, 43, faces one count of felony methamphetamine possession for hypodermic syringes she allegedly tried to stash in a Pepsi bottle during a Thursday traffic stop in Campbell County.
Deputy county attorney Donald Bellamy also charged Legerski with misdemeanor crystal meth possession on allegations she hid a baggie of meth in one of her body cavities.
Dead Plate Light
Campbell County Sheriff’s Deputy Kyle Borgialli performed a traffic stop on a maroon Ford van on Interstate 90 at about 1:20 Thursday morning because the van’s license plate light wasn’t functioning, according to the evidentiary affidavit in Legerski’s case.
Another deputy and a drug-detection dog also arrived as backup.
Borgialli spoke with a man driving the van, who was struggling to find a copy of his insurance in his phone, and with Legerski, who was the only passenger.
The drug-detection K-9 performed a free air sniff of the van’s exterior and alerted on the vehicle, the affidavit says.
Whole Bottle’s Sketchy Now
Borgialli asked Legerski to exit the vehicle. As he approached the passenger-side door, Borgialli watched Legerski shove hypodermic syringes into a mostly-full Pepsi bottle, the document says.
The deputy warned her, saying if she emptied those syringes into the soda, the whole bottle would be considered methamphetamine.
State law upholds this interpretation: law enforcement “shall” include “any carrier element” when weighing illegally possessed drugs. That statute is as 35-7-1031(d).
Legerski reportedly said she had emptied the needles into the Pepsi bottle.
The affidavit says Borgialli arrested Legerski and tested the Pepsi, which tested presumptive positive for meth.
He started taking Legerski to the Campbell County Detention Center when she reportedly let him know that she also had a baggie of meth in her vagina.
At the jail, staffers escorted Legerski to the shower room, where she extracted the baggie and several “unused baggies,” says the affidavit.
Borgialli took the evidence and left the jail.
The Weigh-In
The Pepsi bottle’s contents reportedly weighed in at 465.24 grams once in the evidence vault.
The crystals weighed in at 2.18 grams without packaging, and tested presumptive positive for methamphetamine, the document says.
A Little Good Luck, A Little Hard Luck
It is perhaps fortunate for Legerski that she allegedly told the deputy about the hidden crystal meth. She was charged with misdemeanor methamphetamine possession for that incident, which is punishable by up to one year in jail and $1,000 in fines.
Had she made it into the jail and been caught with meth later, she may have been charged with the more severe violation of taking drugs into jail, which is a felony punishable by up to three years in prison and $3,000 in fines.
However, it would be unfortunate if the syringes Legerski allegedly emptied into the Pepsi bottle had contained less than a third of a gram of liquid meth, because the pre-dump amount would only comprise a misdemeanor in that case, whereas the reported post-dump amount qualifies as a felony.
But a third of a gram is a scant amount even within the hypothetical scenario of what those syringes could have contained. One gram equates to about one paper clip in weight.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
