In a recent jury trial, Scott Whiffen was found guilty of possession of a controlled substance for sale, a category D felony, after being arrested in 2010 during a major crimes interdiction traffic stop on Interstate 80.
Whiffen was scheduled for a jury trial in April 2011 for the charge but did not appear and the trial was vacated. Whiffen was picked up in Washoe County in August 2018, on a bench warrant issued on December 11, 2017, over six years after he failed to appear to his original trial date.
It’s unclear why a warrant wasn’t issued prior to 2017, court documents between 2011 and 2017 show several pre-trial hearing sessions in which Whiffen did not appear and was reported unable to be located by the District Attorney’s office.
On March 15, 2010, Whiffen was stopped on Interstate 80, going 80 miles per hour in a 75 mph zone by former Humboldt County Sheriff Office deputy William Cory Allen and Sergeant Lee Dove.
In court testimony, Allen reported smelling unburnt marijuana while walking from the back of the vehicle to the front passenger side of the vehicle to speak to the driver, and again walking back to the patrol vehicle. Upon reaching the cab of the truck, Allen reported smelling burnt marijuana, a distinctly different smell than when the plant is unburnt. Dove was not present to give testimony at the trial.
Whiffen reportedly told Allen that there were no controlled substances in the car at first, however, as Allen was readying his K-9 drug detection dog to search the vehicle, Allen reported overhearing Whiffen tell Dove that there was a little bit of marijuana in the cab of the truck.
According to Whiffen’s attorney, Humboldt County Public Defender Matthew Stermitz, Whiffen didn’t disclose the possession of the marijuana in the cab of the truck when first asked because he reportedly had a “script” for medical marijuana at the time.
Upon performing a perimeter search of the vehicle, the K-9 unit alerted officers that controlled substances were present in the vehicle. While performing a search, officers found less than an ounce of marijuana in the cab of the truck in a backpack, and subsequently located a white cooler with painted spots containing over 10 pounds of plant-like material, later confirmed by the Washoe County Crime Lab to be marijuana.
The entire quantity of marijuana seized from Whiffen was not tested, a representative of the crime lab said they only test up to the amount needed for a criminal conviction to avoid using unnecessary time and resources. In this case, Whiffen was charged with possession of approximately 881 grams of marijuana confirmed and tested at the Washoe lab, although the total amount recovered was over 4,700 grams.
Marijuana found in such large quantity individually packaged and labeled with various names warrants a charge of possession with intent to sell. Sergeant John Dunckhorst with the Nevada Department of Public Safety Investigation Division, who was a detective at the time, testified that the quantity of marijuana found would have been more than both Whiffen and his passenger could have personally consumed, which supported the intent to sell charge.
Dunckhorst estimated the street value of the total marijuana found to be close to $75,000 at $15 per gram. Stermitz later presented the jury a value of just over $13,000, which represents the 881 grams confirmed and tested at the lab that Whiffen was charged with.
The jury had three verdicts to choose from including not guilty, guilty of possession of a controlled substance and guilty of possession of a controlled substance for sale.
After hearing arguments and evidence in the matter, the jury returned a verdict of guilty of possession of a controlled substance for sale. Whiffen will be sentenced for the conviction at a later date, to be determined by the court.
