Drug charges can quickly threaten your freedom, your reputation, and your future. But even when the evidence against you seems insurmountable, you might have criminal defense options that can give you a leg up on the prosecution. What sort of criminal defense strategies?
Ways you can suppress evidence
One of the strongest is evidence suppression. Here, you ask the judge to disallow the prosecution from using certain evidence against you. There are a number of reasons to ask for evidence suppression, including each of the following:
Illegal search and seizure
Law enforcement is required to follow the law when it comes to searching you, your car, and your home. This means that they generally must have a warrant. Although there are many exceptions to the warrant requirement, law enforcement oftentimes misuses them.
This tends to happen in the context of a traffic stop where the police lack reasonable suspicion to initiate the stop. Here, any subsequent search and seizure is considered tainted by illegality. Therefore, any evidence gathered during one of these illegal stops may be suppressible.
Violations of your Miranda rights
If you’re being interrogated, then the police should read you your rights to remain silent and to be represented by an attorney. If they failed to do so, then any statements you gave, even confessions, may be suppressed.
Failure to appear at a deposition
You should be able to depose the prosecution’s witnesses in order to prepare for trial. If you subpoena those witnesses to appear and they fail to do so, then you may be able to have their testimony disallowed at trial.
Be strategic in your legal maneuvers
There are a lot of different ways to approach your criminal defense. But you need the one that best positions you to beat the prosecution. This strategy might involve a lot of pre-trial work, which is why you need a criminal defense advocate on your side who is skilled in all aspects of this area of the law.