Not sure where I would have went if procecuted but in 1977...
I had finished my two year requirement in the Navy and was finishing off the required three years of in the Reserves on Coranado Island, California. I later found it's one of the tightest security bases on the west coast due to the fact that the Navy Seals are trained there. A friend and I were out walking around on the base looking for a safe place to smoke a joint. We figured the ocean was a safe place. On our way to the beach we walked right past two signs that said it was a restricted beach - Yeah I know, that was pretty fucking stupid! I'm standing there with a bag of weed in hand ready to fire up when two spotlights lit us up like Christmas trees. Four military police piled out of a van and a paddy wagon. The order to freeze was yelled out. I'm thinking no way am I holding on to the bag, so off it flew into the water about 30 feet away. Next, I see the spotlight staring down on my little bag of of floating weed. A man from the military police yells out, "I got it," and rushes into the water like a mad Golden Retriever. On his way back he starts bitching at me because he just got his pants dry cleaned. I thought to myself, "Dude, I never told you to get jump in the freaking ocean!" Being a reserve I was able to grow my hair out and wear a wig on reserve weekends so I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was warned by the driver on the way to the police station that I had pissed off his partner in the other vehicle and also warned that I should watch my step on the way out of the van. Nothing happened and were were put in a holding room for two hours until a chief from our outfit came and signed up out.
The one thing I did right that night was to not agree that the bag of weed they fished out of the ocean was mine. A month later at the next reserve weekend I found out the reason we didn't get processed was because our legal officer wasn't down there with us the previous month. The captain and legal officer came up to me and handed me a half inch thick legal sized envelope and said to me, "These are some very important legal papers for you." I said, "Thank you very much sir!" He kind of smiled and said, I don't know anything about this." I went home and barbacued the damn papers - In the paper work I read that the weed had tested out positive.
I've never been arrested and would just as soon like to keep it that way.