My question involves criminal law for the state of: Florida
Me and two other friends were pulled over a few nights ago while we were smoking and cruising due to the license plate light being out. A K-9 unit was called and the drugs were detected. We confessed to it being a collected pool split between the three of us. The officers measured 9g total of weed and vaped weed.
Fortunately the officers were nice and did not arrest us (they said they could have). Instead we sat there for about an hour while they wrote out paper work and reports. They gave us each a $520 fine which we can just pay off and it would be all over. However we're all college students without jobs and don't have that kind of money.
My question is, would it be beneficial to go to court? Is there anyways we can exchange the fine for community service hours? If not, is there a way we can pay the fine over time, instead of in a lump sum.
One of the paraphernalia was a scale that we use when we buy (**we do not sell**). Could this be trouble if we go to court? I dont want to end up going to court and have it backfire on me and get in even more trouble then i was in.
Thank you for any help you can offer
P.S. all three of us had clean records before this event.
I should also mention that we did not smoke anything yet when we were pulled over. We were in the process of rolling a blunt when it happened but i don't think the officers knew this because we put the weed back into the bag when we were getting pulled over.

