Drug charges can have very serious implications for your life, especially if they result in conviction. While your reputation may take a hit and your criminal record might make it hard to secure employment and housing, a conviction for a drug offense can also strip you of your freedom and leave you financially devastated. If you’re worried about all of that, then you need to carefully develop a criminal defense that aggressively seeks to protect you.
When possible, one of the most effective tools at your disposal is evidence suppression. If evidence is gathered subsequent to a violation of your Constitutional rights, then that evidence is considered tainted and therefore inadmissible against you at trial. This can destroy the prosecution’s case and lead to dropped charges or an acquittal. Even if those aren’t an option, suppression certain pieces of evidence can give you an enormous amount of leverage when negotiating case resolution with the other side.
So what would constitute an illegal act that would lead to evidence suppression? A warrantless search without probable cause is the biggest, but searches subsequent to an illegal traffic stop that wasn’t predicated on reasonable suspicion is another. Generally speaking, probable cause exists when a reasonable person would believe that a crime may have been committed or evidence of a crime would be found in the place to be searched. For the police to search without a warrant, though, there usually must be some sort of exigent circumstances.
This is a complicated area of the law, of course, given that there are a number of exceptions to the warrant requirement and the definitions of probable cause and reasonable suspicion are constantly evolving. For you, this means that you need to know the law and how to use it to your advantage. This might sound daunting, but you don’t have to face these evidentiary issues alone. After all, competent criminal defense attorneys stand ready to take these matters head-on so that you have the best chance possible under the circumstances to obtain a favorable result.
