By Deandra Grant & Griffin Grant
Welcome to The Defense File, where we examine the criminal cases of public figures through the lens of Texas criminal law. Each entry looks at what happened in court, what the defense argued, and what a defendant would have faced (and how they might have been defended) if the same facts had occurred in Texas. This one is a little different It did happen in Texas.
The Incident
On the morning of November 6, 2019, Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Daniel Ross was pulled over by Frisco police. According to the police report later obtained by TMZ Sports, the officer said he stopped Ross’s Dodge Charger for two reasons: music loud enough that he could “hear and feel” it, and the temporary plates on the car. During the stop the officer reported a strong odor of marijuana, and Ross volunteered (before any search) that there was a handgun in the vehicle, explaining that he and friends had taken guns and marijuana to a gun range the day before. A search turned up a joint, a small container holding roughly 0.12 ounces of marijuana, and a Springfield XD 9mm handgun. Ross, who was on the Cowboys’ injured-reserve list with a shoulder injury at the time, was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana and unlawful carrying of a weapon. The Cowboys declined to comment, and Ross’s NFL career wound down over the following season.
The Charges
Both charges were Texas misdemeanors. Possession of a usable quantity of marijuana of two ounces or less is a Class B misdemeanor; unlawful carrying of a weapon, under the law in effect in 2019, was a Class A misdemeanor. Neither was a felony. But the interesting part of this case is not its severity. It is how tightly the two charges were bound together, and how thoroughly the legal ground beneath both of them was shifting in late 2019.
The Texas Analysis
This is one of the rare Defense File entries that needs no transplanting. The arrest happened in Frisco (a Deandra Grant Law market) so the law analyzed below is the law that actually applied. And the timing could hardly have been more consequential: Ross was arrested five months after Texas legalized hemp, in the middle of a statewide upheaval that made marijuana cases newly difficult to prove, and roughly two years before permitless carry rewrote the gun statute. The case is a snapshot of Texas law at a hinge moment.
The Stop: Loud Music, Temporary Plates, and the Limits of a Pretext Claim
The case drew commentary because the stated trigger for the stop was loud music, and some questioned whether it was pretextual. As a matter of constitutional law, that argument runs into a wall. Under Whren v. United States (1996), a traffic stop is valid so long as the officer has an objective basis for it, regardless of the officer’s subjective motive. Here the officer articulated a second, independent basis (the temporary plates) and Texas treats a noise-ordinance violation as a valid basis for a stop as well. A motion to suppress aimed at the stop itself would face long odds. The doctrinal home for a selective-enforcement claim is the Equal Protection Clause, not the Fourth Amendment, and it requires proof of both discriminatory effect and discriminatory purpose which is a bar rarely met, and one that yields no suppression remedy even when raised. The profiling concern is a serious policy question (it is what later drove Dallas voters to pass Proposition R), but it is not where a case like this is won.
The Search and the Hemp Problem: Odor of Marijuana After House Bill 1325
The search is the more interesting question, because of when it happened. In June 2019 (five months before this arrest) Texas enacted House Bill 1325, which redefined “marihuana” to exclude hemp: cannabis containing 0.3% or less THC. Hemp is now legal, marijuana is not, and the two are visually and olfactorily identical. That single change created two distinct problems for the State.
First, on the search. For decades Texas courts held that the odor of marijuana alone gave officers probable cause to search a vehicle. After HB 1325, defense lawyers began arguing that odor no longer reliably signals a crime, because the same smell can come from legal hemp. Texas appellate courts have so far been cautious. Several have continued to hold that marijuana odor can still support probable cause to search. So the odor-suppression argument is real and worth raising, but it faces adverse authority and is not a sure thing. (Here it would have been weaker still, because Ross volunteered the gun and the gun-range context before the search, supplying independent probable cause.)
Second, and more powerfully, on proof. To convict, the State must now prove the substance was marijuana (cannabis above 0.3% THC) and an officer’s nose cannot establish that. It requires quantitative laboratory testing, and in 2019–2020 most Texas crime labs, including DPS, were not equipped to measure THC concentration in plant material. The result was a statewide collapse in low-level marijuana prosecutions; DPS’s own director said publicly the agency would not accept misdemeanor marijuana cases. November 2019 was the height of that crisis.
Possession of Marijuana: Health & Safety Code §481.121
On the books, possessing 0.12 ounces of marijuana is a Class B misdemeanor under §481.121 and punishable up to 180 days in county jail and a $2,000 fine. Texas has no lesser tier for tiny amounts; anything up to two ounces is a Class B. In practice, in late 2019, a charge resting on a small amount of plant material with no THC quantification was exactly the kind of case prosecutors across Texas were dismissing or declining for lack of provable substance. Public records do not reflect a conviction here, and the hemp-testing gap is the most likely reason a case like this would have quietly resolved.
Unlawful Carrying of a Weapon: Texas Penal Code §46.02
Here is the part most readers miss: in November 2019, carrying that handgun in his own car was presumptively legal and it was the marijuana that made it a crime.
Under the version of §46.02 in effect at the time, a person could lawfully carry a handgun in a vehicle they owned or controlled, without any license, unless the handgun was in plain view (and not in a holster) or the person was (a) engaged in criminal activity other than a Class C traffic offense, (b) prohibited from possessing a firearm, or (c) a member of a criminal street gang. Possession of marijuana is criminal activity: a Class B misdemeanor, well above a Class C traffic violation. That is the hook that stripped the motor-vehicle protection and turned lawful transport of a handgun into unlawful carrying. The gun charge, in other words, was parasitic on the drug charge. Knock out the marijuana (through suppression, or, more likely here, the State’s inability to prove the substance) and the predicate “criminal activity” disappears, and with it the basis for the §46.02 charge. The two counts rise and fall together. [Note: The same issue arises in DWI cases where a gun is found in the car and the accused is charged with both DWI and UCW.]
It is worth adding what would change today and what would not. Texas adopted permitless carry in 2021 (House Bill 1927), eliminating the license requirement and the plain-view restriction for most adults 21 and over. But permitless carry would not have rescued Daniel Ross, because the “engaged in criminal activity” disqualifier survived the 2021 reform untouched. Then as now, a lawful carrier loses the protection the moment he is committing another offense. The drug possession was always the real problem.
How Would the Defense Approach This in Texas?
- Lead with the substance, not the stop. The strongest position is the simplest: can the State prove the green material was marijuana rather than legal hemp? Without a lab result quantifying THC above 0.3%, it cannot. In a 2019 Collin County misdemeanor, the absence of that testing capacity was frequently dispositive, and a Texas defense team would press that point from the first setting.
- Keep the odor-suppression argument in reserve. Even though appellate authority still lets odor support a search, the post-hemp landscape makes every odor-based search worth scrutinizing: what the officer actually smelled, whether it was distinguishable from hemp, and whether anything beyond odor justified the search.
- Treat the two charges as one. Because the §46.02 count depends on the marijuana being a provable crime, work on the drug charge does double duty. If the marijuana fails, counsel would move to dismiss the weapons charge for lack of the predicate “criminal activity.”
- Contain the volunteered statements. Ross’s roadside admissions about the gun and the gun-range trip handed the State independent probable cause and undercut a pure suppression theory. A Texas defense team would examine the circumstances of those statements (ex. when the encounter became custodial, when Miranda attached) while recognizing that the substance-proof problem is the more reliable path.
- Use first-offender options to protect the record. For a defendant with no prior record, some counties offer diversion and deferred paths that, completed successfully, lead to dismissal and eligibility for expunction or nondisclosure. Keeping a single bad morning off a permanent record is often the whole game.
What This Case Illustrates
Daniel Ross’s arrest looks, at a glance, like a routine traffic stop that turned up a little weed and a gun. What makes it worth studying is everything underneath. The gun charge that sounds serious was entirely dependent on the drug charge that sounds trivial. The drug charge that sounds easy to prove had, weeks earlier, become one of the hardest misdemeanors in Texas to prove at all. And the profiling concern that drew the headlines was, doctrinally, the least promising avenue of defense. The real leverage was forensic and statutory which is exactly the kind of leverage that stays invisible unless you know where the law was standing in November 2019.
It is also a reminder that none of this is abstract. The stop happened in Frisco, in Deandra Grant Law’s own backyard, under statutes the firm litigates in Collin County courts every week. The same hemp-testing problem that would have shaped Ross’s case shapes marijuana and THC-concentrate cases here today.
Related Reading on Deandra Grant Law
- Drug Crimes Defense in Texas — Marijuana, THC concentrates, and the hemp-law proof problem that follows HB 1325.
- Weapons Charges in Texas — Unlawful carrying, permitless carry, and when a lawful gun becomes an unlawful one.
Sources
- ESPN — Daniel Ross arrest: com
- TMZ Sports — Ross police report and arrest video (stop, odor, items recovered): com
- Associated Press / Fox News — arrest coverage: com
- Texas Health & Safety Code §481.121 (Possession of Marihuana): capitol.texas.gov
- Texas Penal Code §46.02 (Unlawful Carrying Weapons), 2019 version: capitol.texas.gov
- House Bill 1325 (Texas Hemp Farming Act, 2019) — redefinition of “marihuana” to exclude hemp
- Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996) — pretextual traffic stops
The Defense File is an educational series. All analysis is general and does not constitute legal advice about any specific case.
If you are facing drug, weapons, or search-and-seizure issues in Frisco, Collin County, or anywhere in Texas, call (214) 225-7117 for a free, confidential consultation. Or schedule online at texasdwisite.com.