Drug charges can threaten to upend your future, preventing you from living up to your full potential. This can include the risk of jail or prison time, hefty fines and a mar on your criminal record that affect everything from your ability to secure and maintain meaningful employment to your standing in the community. All of that can leave you overwhelmed and uncertain about the future. As a result, you may find yourself driven to accept a plea deal offered by the prosecution that promises to help you sidestep the harshest of penalties being threatened against you.
However, before throwing in the towel in your drug case, fully consider the circumstances to see if there’s a way to beat the allegations that’ve been levied against you. One way to do this is to analyze the facts of your case to see if you can successfully block the prosecution from admitting harmful evidence against you at trial.
There are several ways to approach the issue of evidence suppression. All of them, though, are going to be fact specific, meaning that you may not have every argument available to you in your case. That said, here are some of the most common circumstances that may lead to successful suppression of the prosecution’s evidence:
- An illegal traffic stop: A lot of drug arrests come after a traffic stop and subsequent search of the vehicle. But the police can’t just pull you over on a whim. Instead, they have to have reasonable suspicion that you’ve committed an offense or an infraction before initiating a stop. If they pull you over without the proper suspicion, then the stop is illegal, and so is any resulting search. This illegality taints the entire process, violating your Constitutional rights, meaning that you should be able to block any illegally seized evidence from being used against you.
- A failure to advise you of your rights: When you’re in custody and being subjected to interrogation, you have the right to remain silent and the right to have an attorney present. If the police don’t advise you of those rights, then any incriminating statements that you made are likely illegally obtained, meaning that you could block them from being admitted at trial.
- Improper evidence collection, storage and testing: The police have to follow very specific protocols when they gather, store and test evidence, including alleged narcotics. When they make an error, it can compromise the evidence in question, which could put you at risk of being convicted based on something that isn’t what the prosecution claims it to be.
If you think that the police have made any of the errors mentioned above, then be sure to discuss them with your criminal defense attorney. If warranted, your attorney can file a motion to suppress, which will lay out the facts and the justifications for why the evidence at hand should be deemed inadmissible at trial. The court will likely then schedule a hearing on the motion. After arguments are heard, the court will issue its determination.
While evidence suppression can play a key role in your criminal defense, there may be other strategies that you might be able to use to protect yourself. So, even if you’re unsuccessful in blocking the most damaging evidence from being used against you, don’t lose hope.