He consented to a search with nothing to hide – then was arrested over medication that wasn’t illegal

Brian Getchius thought he was making the safe choice when deputies in Greenwood County, South Carolina, asked to search his car during what began as a traffic stop on his way back to Florida.

As attorney John Bryan explained in a new Civil Rights Lawyer video, Getchius believed he had nothing illegal in the vehicle, so he agreed to let officers look through it, apparently thinking cooperation would help keep a routine stop from becoming something more serious.

Instead, Bryan said, deputies found Getchius’ legal prescription medication for irritable bowel syndrome, treated it as suspicious, ran it through field drug tests, and arrested him after claiming the pills tested positive for controlled substances.

According to Bryan, it took Getchius one year, four months, and 28 days from the date of his arrest to clear his name, even though he “was ever in possession of any illegal controlled substances” at no point during that period.

A Traffic Stop Turns Into A Search

Bryan said the stop happened on May 15, 2024, while Getchius was driving to Florida after visiting his mother in South Carolina following the recent death of his father.

At the time, Bryan said, Getchius had reached about 14 and a half months of sobriety and was working in Florida at an addiction treatment center, helping others in recovery. That made what happened next especially painful, because the accusation placed him in exactly the kind of situation he had been working to move beyond.

Bodycam footage shown in Bryan’s report begins with Deputy Keenir approaching the vehicle and telling Getchius he had been stopped for window tint and for allegedly driving “all over the road.”

Getchius provided his identification and admitted his driver’s license was suspended. The deputy then asked him to step out of the vehicle and began asking whether there were guns, drugs, or anything else in the car that officers needed to know about.

Getchius repeatedly said no.

The officers also commented on his nervousness, but Bryan argued that nervousness during a police stop is not unusual and should not be treated as meaningful proof of criminal activity. He noted that South Carolina is in the Fourth Circuit, where courts have recognized that nervousness is of limited value because many ordinary people become anxious when dealing with police.

Still, the stop moved from a traffic matter into a vehicle search.

The Prescription Bottle At The Center Of The Case

During the search, Bryan said Deputy McClinton found a blue prescription bottle bearing Getchius’ name. The bottle was labeled for dicyclomine HCL 10 milligrams, a non-controlled prescription medication commonly used to treat IBS.

According to Bryan, the medication inside was legal, prescribed to Getchius, and identifiable by its markings. Getchius told deputies the pills were dicyclomine and explained that he had the medication because of stomach issues.

The deputies did not accept that explanation.

In the footage, McClinton says the pills did not look right and suggested they appeared worn or fake. He also questioned why tablets were inside a bottle originally labeled for capsules, a detail Getchius tried to explain by saying he had placed older medication in the bottle for travel.

Bryan said one of the most important moments came when McClinton used his phone to search the pill markings and, according to the report, confirmed at the scene that the pills matched Getchius’ explanation.

That should have been the off-ramp. Once a marked prescription pill in a labeled bottle is identified as a legal medication, the burden should shift heavily against turning a roadside hunch into a felony arrest.

But that is not what happened.

Field Tests And Conflicting Results

Bryan said Deputy McClinton proceeded to use a fentanyl field test kit on the medication, despite the internet search confirming the pill identification. According to Bryan, those presumptive field tests are known to produce false positives when used on various legal medications, including dicyclomine.

The bodycam footage shows officers debating the color results from the test kits and what the results supposedly meant. At one point, Getchius can be heard pleading with deputies and asking them to look at the imprint on the pills.

One officer responded that the imprint did not mean much because, in his experience, people press fake pills with markings.

McClinton also referenced his own alleged prior experience with fake pressed pills, saying that when he was making fake pills with a press, pills could crumble if the press was not set tightly enough. Bryan highlighted that statement and said McClinton later described himself in a report as having prior knowledge of pills consistent with being clandestinely made and containing fentanyl.

The conversation became even more confusing as the deputies suggested different possible substances. Bryan said one test was treated as indicating fentanyl, while another later test was a cocaine field test that supposedly identified the same pills as cocaine HCL, freebase, or crack.

That alone should raise serious concerns. When the same legal prescription medication can be labeled as different illegal drugs by different quick tests, the problem is not just one bad stop; it is a warning about relying too heavily on roadside chemistry to make life-altering decisions.

“You’re Going To Jail, Brian”

Getchius begged not to be arrested, telling deputies he had never been to jail and asking whether he could be given a summons instead.

In the footage, an officer tells him, “You’re going to jail, Brian,” while insisting the pills had tested positive and did not look like manufactured pharmaceutical pills.

Getchius told the deputies he would not have given permission to search the car if he had anything illegal. That point may sound obvious, but it is also exactly why Bryan used the case as a warning: people often assume consent is harmless when they know they are innocent.

The problem is that innocence does not always prevent an arrest once an officer believes he has found something.

Getchius was arrested and transported to the Greenwood County Detention Center. Bryan said deputies then performed a second, more thorough search of the vehicle, including under the hood, around the battery box, along door panels and trim, and around the tires, but found nothing else.

The case did not stop with the arrest. Bryan said the next day, Deputy James Travis Freeman, who was not present at the stop or arrest, submitted three arrest warrant affidavits. Based on those affidavits, Magistrate Cheryl Warren issued warrants charging Getchius with trafficking fentanyl, first offense, and two additional counts related to manufacture, distribution, or possession of a Schedule II controlled substance.

Bryan said the fentanyl trafficking charge carried a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years in prison without parole.

What The Warrants Allegedly Left Out

According to Bryan, the warrant affidavits omitted a key fact: Deputy McClinton had identified the pill markings at the scene as dicyclomine through an internet search.

Bryan connected that omission to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Franks v. Delaware, explaining that a warrant can be invalid if an officer knowingly, intentionally, or recklessly includes a false statement, or omits a material fact, and that falsehood or omission is necessary to probable cause.

In plain language, Bryan’s argument is that the court was not given the full picture. If a deputy already had information showing the pills matched a legal prescription medication, that information mattered.

Getchius paid heavily while the system waited for more definitive testing. Bryan said he spent 15 days in jail before bonding out, then spent another seven months on house arrest with an ankle monitor, mostly confined to his mother’s home in Greenwood.

During that period, Bryan said, Getchius could not return to his job in Florida and struggled to maintain the recovery support and sponsorship relationships that had helped sustain his sobriety.

He also incurred tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs defending himself.

Lab Results Finally Come Back

The pills were eventually sent to the South Carolina SLED State Forensic Laboratory, but Bryan said the lab had a backlog of around 18,000 cases, which meant Getchius waited more than six months for the results.

On October 1, 2025, according to Bryan, a SLED scientist issued a report confirming that the alleged fentanyl and cocaine were actually dicyclomine, the legal IBS medication Getchius had identified from the beginning.

Even then, Bryan said, prosecutors did not immediately disclose the results to the defense, despite daily inquiries from Getchius’ lawyer, Charles Gross. Bryan said prosecutors held the lab results for about two weeks before turning them over.

Then, according to Bryan, prosecutors still offered Getchius a plea deal, asking him to plead guilty to a reduced possession charge in exchange for dismissal of the trafficking charge, even after the lab confirmed there were no controlled substances.

That detail is one of the most troubling parts of the story. A person with less support, less money, or more fear might have taken that deal just to end the nightmare, and then the public record would have shown a guilty plea instead of a false accusation.

Getchius refused. Eventually, the charges were dismissed.

A Case About Consent, Field Tests And Accountability

Bryan said a lawsuit has now been filed and remains in its early stages. He argued that the case should prompt reform in how departments use field drug tests, especially when those tests can produce false positives that lead to jail, house arrest, lost work, legal bills, and severe emotional damage.

He also pointed to the SLED backlog as a civil rights issue, because people accused of drug crimes may sit in jail or live under restrictions while waiting months for reliable lab results.

Getchius himself, in footage included by Bryan, wondered how many people are sitting in jail waiting for tests to prove what they possessed was really medicine.

That is the larger question here. A field test should never be treated as the same thing as a full lab result, especially when the item being tested is a marked prescription medication in a bottle with the person’s name on it.

Bryan ended the report by warning viewers not to assume that having nothing to hide means there is no risk in consenting to a search.

Getchius had nothing to hide, according to Bryan. He had no illegal drugs. He had a prescription medication that was later confirmed by the state lab. Yet he still lost more than a year of his life to a criminal case that should never have gone that far.