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What’s in your shopping cart? What combination of products do you happen to have there? To what uses might it be put? And who’s watching you while you’re shopping? If these sound like questions bent toward paranoia, you probably haven’t read today’s Washington Supreme Court decision in Washington v. Montgomery.

This is a criminal case: Virgil Montgomery, 60, was convicted of possession of pseudoephedrine with intent to manufacture methamphetamine. That he and his shopping partner, Joyce Biby, 63, purchased pseudoephedrine - within several boxes of cold medicine - is undisputed. But how do you prove what the two of them planned to do with it?

Washington state law sets a pretty low bar for such proof, and there’s the issue.

Here’s the story according to Montgomery, with the police perspective interwoven (there’s not much dispute about the facts):

Montgomery testified that he, an ordained minister, first met Biby
around 15 years ago. The two fell out of contact before getting reacquainted
in 2004 while volunteering together at a local food bank. Montgomery
testified that he and Biby are not now and have never been romantically
involved. According to Montgomery, Biby confided in him about her
troubles with the Social Security Administration. She became so upset telling
him of her upcoming mental health assessment that Montgomery offered to
drive her the hour or so from their homes in Newport, Washington and
Oldtown, Idaho to the appointment in Spokane.

On June 23, 2004, the pair set off in a Geo Storm borrowed from
Biby’s son-in-law. According to Montgomery, when Biby finished her
appointment, she was extremely upset and could not drive. The two decided to do some shopping before returning home.

They first went to a large grocery, where Montgomery bought some
matches for his wood stove and his son’s cigarettes. Montgomery’s 33-year-
old son has been disabled by a stroke. Montgomery no longer works as a
minister because he is the primary caregiver for both his son and his 14-year-
old grandson. The next stop was the cold medicine aisle at Target in the
Spokane Valley, which, unfortunately for Montgomery and Biby, was under
police surveillance.

They attracted the attention of police who were watching from a video
room, because upon entering the store, Montgomery and Bidy made an
immediate right turn and went directly to the cold medicine. Police saw
Montgomery point to particular brands and select two boxes of Target brand
cold medicine containing the decongestant pseudoephedrine. The two then
shopped and paid for their purchases separately, choosing separate check-out
lines, Montgomery testified, to get through more quickly. Montgomery
finished first and waited for Biby in the front of the store. Montgomery also
testified that he did not know Biby had later returned and selected two boxes
of the same cold medicine he had bought.

They continued shopping, under surveillance; on their way back home, police pulled them over, searched the car and of course found the items they had bought: “Montgomery and Biby had bought five of the nine necessary ingredients to manufacture methamphetamine, entered stores together and split up to buy the ingredients, bought unusually large quantities of acetone and hydrogen peroxide, and went from one store to the next, buying potential ingredients at nearly every stop.”

You can understand the cause for police suspicion. At the same time, Montgomery has what sounds like reasonable explanations for all the pieces of this: hydrogen peroxide for an injured dog, acetone for floor repair, and so on. None of the items bought were particularly exotic, and they’re stocked in large stores precisely because people often buy them. As to their behavior, if they were not a couple, you might expect the two of them to split up while shopping. (Married couples often do too.) None of this proves innocence either, but it does throw some doubt on the proceedings.

Why not, if suspicion is once aroused, follow the two, wait a bit, and get a warrant to search their houses? If their plan was to manufacture meth, there’d surely be some physical evidence of production beyond the realm of common household purchases, and that would probably nail the issue.

But, as the Supreme Court noted, Washington law doesn’t require anything close for a legal determination of intent: “A conviction for possession of pseudoephedrine with intent to manufacture methamphetamine survives a sufficiency challenge if there is at least one other factor supporting intent beyond mere possession of the pseudoephedrine. Evidence has been found sufficient where the defendant worked in concert with another person to acquire the pseudoephedrine or possessed one other “distinctive ingredient” of methamphetamine.”

That ought to throw a chill into you if you ever plan to go shopping with another person, or if you don’t know what the commonplace ingredients of meth are, and fail to make damn sure you don’t have more than one of them on your person or in your house . . .