Disabled Colorado grandma took out a second mortgage and took on the state when wrongly accused of possessing cocaine: The costs of flawed drug tests

The officer was there to charge her with possession of cocaine.

“I said, ‘Cocaine? Cocaine? I don’t do cocaine,’” she told the news outlet (1).

Emergency responders had uncovered a prescription drug crushed in her purse during the accident. They turned it over to police at the scene.

Officers immediately ran the substance through a drug test known as a colorimetric field test, which returned a false positive for cocaine.

This is not uncommon. The tests have a false-positive rate of nearly 40% according to a 2024 report by the Quattrone Center at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2).

Police across the U.S. use colorimetric tests because they’re convenient — they can be done roadside or anywhere in the field — and cheap.

But as the Quattrone Center report reveals, flawed tests come with a high legal, financial and personal cost for an estimated 30,000 innocent Americans wrongfully charged with drug possession every year. Bennet is one of them.

Here’s how her fight of nearly two years ended up at the Colorado State Capitol building and what it could mean for others wrongfully accused of drug possession.

One woman’s long costly, battle against a wrongful charge

As it stands, anyone wrongly accused of drug possession can — at the authorities’ discretion — be arrested or detained. They can fight the charge in court at their own expense or take a plea deal.

It’s one reason why the Quattrone study concluded that the colorimetric test is “one of the largest, if not the largest, known contributing factor to wrongful arrests and convictions in the United States.”

The Boulder District Attorney’s Office recommended Bennet plead guilty to possession. In return, they’d drop criminal charges and she could do some other form of restitution, like community service.

Bennet refused to accept the plea deal. She wanted to clear her name. So she took out a second mortgage on her house to hire lawyer Noah Stout.

They asked the state prosecutor to run a second test on the substance found in her purse, but he initially refused.

For a year and a half, Bennet and Stout continued to fight for a re-test. The battle took a toll on Bennet’s finances and vulnerable health.

Ultimately, she offered to pay out of pocket for a re-test. The prosecutor agreed, and the follow-up lab analysis proved she was right — and innocent — all along.

Stout praised his client’s courage, but told CBS News he’s concerned about thousands of innocent Americans “who don’t have the resources, the tenacity of Holly who might just be pressured into taking a plea bargain.”

Colorado Rep. Jennifer Bacon agrees.

“When you’re standing in front of law enforcement, then they shake something and they’re like, ‘You have it,’ people don’t know how they can fight that,” she told CBS.

“And so they’re just taking deals.”

Now, based on Bennet’s case, Bacon and fellow Colorado state lawmakers have introduced a bill that would require law enforcement to issue a ticket for suspected drug possession based on a presumptive test — pending a lab test — rather than booking a suspect into detention (3).