State v. Ramirez

Justice LEE,

opinion of the Court:

€1 Patrick Robert Ramirez was charged with possession of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia, but the district court declined to bind him over for trial at a preliminary hearing. The State appealed, and a divided court of appeals affirmed. We now reverse, correcting what we see as errors in the lower courts' articulation and application of the probable cause standard that applies in a preliminary hearing.

I

1 2 While in jail on drug charges in Washington County, Ramirez directed a woman on the other end of a phone call to go to his motel room and "retrieve a…