If you’re convicted of drug charges, it can impact you professionally and personally. Fortunately, a skilled and experienced defense attorney can identify flaws in the prosecutor’s case. This often entails looking at the arrest procedure itself. Here are a few errors police make that can work to your advantage. 

3 Types of Police Mistakes Defense Attorneys See in Drug Cases 

1. Entrapment

Entrapment is an affirmative defense attorneys can raise for clients in drug cases, especially when law enforcement officers provide drugs for use or sale. Under New York law, public servants or people acting for them cannot actively induce or encourage you to commit a crime if you weren’t otherwise inclined to do so.

However, there is a thin line here. If police merely give you an opportunity to commit a crime and you do so, this is not entrapment. They must encourage or importune.

2. Unlawful Search & Seizure

The Fourth Amendment protects you against unlawful search and seizure. The government cannot use illegally obtained evidence against you. If police officers stop your vehicle because of a broken taillight and see baggies of marijuana or pills on the seat next to you, they can seize those drugs because they are in plain view. However, in other circumstances in automobile searches, full probable cause is required before a car can be searched. Officers cannot enter your home and search it without your permission or a Search Warrant.   

3. Lost Drug Evidence

The state must produce the physical evidence it has collected against you. Sometimes a prosecutor can’t prove a chain of custody from the time the material was seized and later tested until it’s brought to court. In other situations, drug evidence is simply lost. In such cases, a defense attorney can move for dismissal.   

Drug cases involve far more than simple guilt or innocence with respect to sale or possession. Thomas A. Corletta, Attorney & Counselor at Law in Rochester, NY, pays strict attention to details that can make a big difference in the outcome of a case. Applying almost 40 years of experience focused on criminal law and DWI, this skilled criminal defense attorney examines all issues from every angle to build the strongest case he can from each set of individual