Case Summary
On November 13, 2023, Anthony Lee and Christina Pierre were sitting at a bus stop near South Tryon Street and Arrowood Road in Charlotte after finishing their shifts at a nearby Bojangles. Both are Black. As they shared a hemp cigarette they had legally purchased at a local smoke shop, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) officers Devan Wilson and Kenneth Kludy approached, claiming they smelled marijuana. Despite Lee and Pierre immediately and repeatedly explaining that the substance was legally purchased hemp, Officer Wilson handcuffed Lee within 25 seconds of approaching him. Officer Kludy then pulled Pierre off the bench, and a third officer who arrived at the scene, Vincent Pistone, delivered seven knee strikes and ten hammer fists to Pierre. Lee was charged with three misdemeanors, all of which the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office voluntarily dismissed two weeks later, stating it did not have “a reasonable likelihood of success at any potential trial.”
On July 27, 2026, SCSJ filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina on Lee’s behalf against Officer Wilson, Officer Kludy, and the City of Charlotte. The complaint brings claims for false arrest, excessive force, assault and battery, and malicious prosecution under the Fourth Amendment and North Carolina law, along with municipal liability claims against the City of Charlotte for permitting its police force to knowingly use “junk science” to justify making arrests.
Why It’s Important
In the United States, there are more than 10 million arrests per year, equivalent to one every three seconds. Across the nation, and particularly in the South, over-policing, discriminatory and selective policing, and police violence run wide and deep. In Charlotte, North Carolina, study after study has shown that Black residents have been stopped, searched, arrested, and victimized by excessive force by CMPD at dramatically higher rates than white residents.
Mr. Lee’s arrest occurred in this context. And the police sought to justify it by claiming the impossible: that they could tell the difference between the smell of burning marijuana and hemp. Marijuana and hemp are the same plant species and are indistinguishable by smell or sight. In 2019, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation circulated a memo to law enforcement statewide, including CMPD, explaining that officers could no longer rely on the appearance or odor of marijuana to establish probable cause to arrest someone. In 2021, CMPD’s own legal counsel told officers in writing that they would “need additional evidence beyond the sight or smell of marijuana to establish probable cause.” Yet CMPD kept making arrests on that basis anyway, up to and including Lee’s arrest in November 2023.
