Early reports from Florida's Okeechobee Music and Arts Festival were that the festival had a great inaugural year. But there were also a surprisingly high number of arrests made for a festival of this size. About 70 arrests were made for a crowd of 30,000 thousand people.

Today, a Deputy DA for Okeechobee County announced they would be dropping charges in over 40 arrests made at the festival. The reason? The searches conducted at the event were illegal. As Deputy DA Ashley Albright explained today, “The cases I cannot prosecute are all administrative-type searches done at the entry point by law enforcement at the request of event organizers. That resulted in seizing a large amount of drugs that already kept them from being used or sold. But, because the searches were done as administrative searches, they cannot be prosecuted.”

As I’ve mentioned in prior articles. It is a legal urban myth that just because your ticket says you “consent to a search” you no longer have any legal rights. These type of “administrative” searches (sometimes called “implied consent”) might later be thrown out if conducted improperly. That’s why it’s so important to know your rights.

Photo by: The Festival Lawyer

In the arrests that were tossed out today, the prosecutor felt that even though the tickets themselves said “patrons would be searched upon entry,” the searches were invalid. That’s because the event failed to tell festival-goers that they had a right to refuse to be searched and, if they did refuse, the price of the ticket would be refunded.

No one's festival experience should be ruined by overly aggressive law enforcement tactics. As always be safe, have fun and KNOW YOUR RIGHTS!