An Air Force member is asking the nation’s highest military appeals court to overturn a decades-old legal principle that can allow a positive marijuana urinalysis to serve as evidence that a service member knowingly used it.
The argument comes in a newly filed 46-page brief in United States v. Collyn L. Lawrence, a case the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces agreed earlier this month to review. Lawrence’s attorneys argue that widespread marijuana legalization, commercial availability and the proliferation of THC-containing products have undermined assumptions on which the military’s “permissive inference” for marijuana use has historically been based.
Under the Manual for Courts-Martial, knowledge that a controlled substance is present is required for a wrongful-use conviction. However, knowledge may be inferred from the presence of the substance in a service member’s body, and that inference can in some circumstances be legally sufficient to satisfy the government’s burden of proof.
Lawrence’s attorneys contend that the inference made more sense when marijuana was uniformly prohibited and primarily available through the illicit market. Today, they argue, marijuana is widely available through state-regulated dispensaries and in numerous product forms, while labeling and the proliferation of intoxicating cannabinoid products make inadvertent exposure more plausible.
The brief specifically asks the court to partially overturn its 1987 decision in United States v. Ford, which upheld use of the permissive inference in a marijuana case. Lawrence’s attorneys argue that the legal and societal landscape surrounding marijuana has changed dramatically during the nearly four decades since that ruling.
“Overruling Ford in part does not stop marijuana use prosecutions in the military,” the brief states. Instead, Lawrence’s attorneys say it would require prosecutors to establish knowing marijuana use with evidence beyond a positive urinalysis result.
Lawrence was selected for a random urinalysis on January 9, 2024. His sample tested at 22 nanograms per milliliter for a THC metabolite, seven nanograms above the Department of Defense cutoff of 15 ng/mL. He was later convicted of wrongful THC use and sentenced to a reduction in rank to E-2 and a reprimand.
His attorneys emphasize that the government presented no direct evidence that he knowingly consumed marijuana. They also point to testimony from the government’s own laboratory expert, who acknowledged that the urine test could not establish whether the THC use was knowing or unknowing and agreed that Lawrence’s sample was consistent with unknowing use.
The defense argues that this is particularly important because military precedent requires the government, when relying on scientific evidence, to establish that the detected concentration is high enough to reasonably discount unknowing ingestion. Lawrence’s attorneys contend that the government failed to make that showing in his case.
The Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals upheld Lawrence’s conviction in May, finding the permissive inference constitutional and the evidence legally sufficient. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces subsequently agreed to consider both whether the inference is unconstitutional in marijuana cases and whether Lawrence’s conviction was legally supported.
The new brief asks the court to reverse that ruling, set aside Lawrence’s conviction and sentence and dismiss the marijuana charge with prejudice. The government has 21 days from the filing of Lawrence’s brief to submit its response.
