Ah. You know exactly how this went down, huh? My description is just as likely, maybe more so, since it explains why the janitor reported it.
You can't explain it except to say the janitor shouldn't have believed the kid when the kid claimed it was cocaine, but he should have believed him when he said he was kidding.
Uh-huh.
"and in any case it was not in fact cocaine."
Neither the school nor the police said it was. If it was cocaine, he would have been charged differently.
He was charged with possessing a substance that looked like cocaine and was represented as cocaine to his friends. That is a Class 3 felony in Illinois. That is also against school policy.
The state and the school couldn't care less what the substance actually was.
Whatever fits his agenda.
Red herring. The issue is not what was believed but whether the totality of the kid's statement (as opposed to a tendentiously extracted fragment) amounted to a representation that the sugar was cocaine ... which it did not.
He was charged with possessing a substance that looked like cocaine and was represented as cocaine to his friends.
As the totality of his statement makes clear, he did not so represent.