Drug offenses range from relatively minor Possession of Marijuana cases, where dismissals are obtainable, to extremely serious first-degree felony charges like Manufacturing Controlled Substances, where the State almost always wants prison time. There are two primary focuses in drug cases: 1) whether the initial stop/search/seizure was legal, and 2) whether the State has enough evidence to link you to the drugs.
Seasoned officers are well-trained to “document” just enough probable cause so that their search is found to be legal. For instance, if your search resulted from a traffic stop, you will likely see the words “furtive gesture” in offense report. That being said, a careful look at the underlying facts of the traffic stop and/or search often reveals an argument that the drugs were illegally seized. If the judge can be convinced at a hearing that your Fourth Amendment right against illegal searches and seizures has been violated, your case will be dismissed. We have successfully fought many illegal seizures.
If the search and seizure was legal, the State still has to prove that you were in possession of the drugs. On the one hand, the law of possession is strong in that every person in a room can be charged with possessing drugs found in that room— someone who had just arrived. On the other hand, the State has to established sufficient “affirmative links” to prove that you were in possession of those drugs. For example, if you have just entered a room that you have never been in before, it is harder for the State to prove you were in control of those drugs—this is especially true if the drugs were not in plain sight and you had no way of knowing they were there. This can also be the case when you are driving someone else’s car and can prove that it’s not registered to you, that you had just borrowed it, and that the drugs were hidden from view.
Even if the initial search and seizure is good and the drugs are clearly yours, there are still several creative solutions we can discuss with the State that will prevent you from ever having a conviction in the case.
