11-year-old suspended for 364 days for possessing leaf that looked like marijuana

It’s a case of a school’s zero-tolerance policy going way too far and administrators sticking to their story even months after they knew it wasn’t a banned substance.

Here’s the school’s version, per the Roanoke Times:

It’s open and shut. Case closed.

But while that’s what  Bruce and Linda Bays were told happened with their 11-year-old son, a sixth-grader in the gifted-and-talented program at Bedford Middle School, they found out months into his suspension that leaf had been tested multiple times and was not marijuana.

A prosecutor ended up eventually dropping the juvenile court charges because of the three negative tests, the Roanoke Times reported. 

But the school didn’t relent.

The Bays have filed a federal lawsuit against Bedford County Schools and the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office, alleging that Bedford Middle School Assistant Principal Brian Wilson and school operations chief Frederick “Mac” Duis violated their son’s due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.

“Essentially they kicked him out of school for something they couldn’t prove he did,” Roanoke attorney Melvin Williams, the Bays’ lawyer, told the Roanoke Times.

It also accuses the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office of “malicious prosecution,” because the school resource officer filed marijuana possession charges against the boy despite the negative drug tests.

“The field test came back not inconclusive, but negative,” Williams said. “Yet she went to a magistrate and swore he possessed marijuana at school.”

For their part, the couple says their son has just been transformed from a happy-go-lucky child into a depressed kid under psychiatric care.

Linda told the Roanoke Times that their son repeatedly told them that he has no idea how the mystery leaf got in his backpack.

“I asked, ‘Can I see the leaf?’ and the deputy said, ‘No, it’s already in evidence,’ ” Linda said. “We have never seen the leaf. He’s been out of school for six months.”