Our client was driving from California to Florida for Bike Week in Daytona when he was stopped in a small town in Florida. The officer searched his car and found a large quantity of marijuana. Our client had a legal marijuana prescription from California; however, the law in Florida does not allow for legal possession even with a valid prescription from California. The client had initially hired a lawyer from another criminal defense firm to represent him. That lawyer had the client enter a guilty plea to the felony possession charge without realizing that the Court was going to follow the State's recommendation of 18 months in prison. Our client realized that he was going to have to spend the next year and a half of his life in a Florida prison and so he hired us. Mitch Stone immediately began researching the issues and filed a motion to withdraw the plea in order to pursue a medical marijuana defense. Upon litigating the case and further negotiating with the State it became apparent the Court was not going to allow the plea to be withdrawn. That meant our client would likely have to sit in prison to await an appellate court decision on whether he should be allowed to withdraw his plea and pursue a medical necessity defense at trial. Alternatively, we switched gears and presented a mitigation case to the court which included expert medical reports, character letters and various other informative documents. The State stuck to their position and argued our client should get 18 motnhs in prison. The court weighed the positions and agreed with us and sentenced our client only to pay costs. Our client was able to return home to California without having to spend any time in prison. Although we believed we had a strong defense that could have resulted in a not guilty verdict our objective to keep our client out of prison was met.