Orlando Drug Crimes Attorney | Constitutional Search and Seizure
TRANSCRIPT: When you are looking into a drug case there is some things that are very normal that you would always do. How the law enforcement comes into the knowledge that you are in possession of the drug and how they gain that drug all depends on if they had a constitutional basis to do that search and the seizure. There is all kinds of case law out there to what's a legal search and what's not legal. You also have entrapment cases if you have an undercover informant. Undercover informants are bound by the same laws as law enforcement officers. And if they fudge or cheat, if they say things or do things that a law enforcement officer couldn't say or do, then you potentially have an entrapment case. If the drugs themselves are thrown out, this would ordinarily throw out the case. For example, if there is an illegal stop of a car or unlawful search of the vehicle. If the search is without someone's consent and there is not a basis for probable cause to do the search, the drugs are going to be thrown out. So we deal with those issues all the time. That's the kind of thing that an experienced criminal defense lawyer will know to do and what to look for. If for example you are not given an informant in a case but you realize there must of been an informant we then file a motion to produce those things. Sometimes law enforcement has made an agreement to not produce their informant for reasons of protecting the informant. If they do so, the state's only choice is to either produce the informant or the case is dismissed. Those are all the things we look at in a major drug case.
By
Kendell Ali
