Man Jailed for Months for Possession of ... Vitamins

Joey Burrell got pulled over on Nov. 14 because he was driving out of a supermarket parking lot without his lights on. Then his luck got worse: Police in Mankato, Minn., found a bag of powder in his car, and a field test suggested it might be meth, reports KMSP-TV. Cops didn't buy the 31-year-old's story that the powder was actually vitamins for his sore shoulder, so into jail he went. And there he sat for weeks, until a state lab test was finally ordered, and it confirmed that Burrell's powder was perfectly legal. Authorities immediately released him after about three months in jail.

"I had been sitting in the jail since November with my bail set at $250,000," Burrell tells the Mankato Free Press. "Then, two days before trial, they dropped the charges and let me go." He says prosecutors had pressed him to plead guilty, but he declined. Burrell has a criminal history and acknowledges using drugs in the past. In fact, that's one more twist in the story: He says he had just completed a drug-treatment program before his arrest. (More vitamins stories.)