How To Get A Drug Charge Dropped

[Music] we represent a lot of clients who are charged with possession of drugs or trafficking and narcotics at all levels right from minor possession charges right up to conspiracy to trafficking uh you know pounds and pounds of cocaine and you know every client who comes to us the first question is will i be able to get this charge dropped what are the strengths and weeks in the case what are you going to do mr cruz i mean i'm desperate i mean some clients are facing years in jail obviously on serious charges whereas others are facing more minor results sentences so what's the strategy what do we do as a lawyer well the first thing we do of course when you hire us is we order the police reports the disclosure we we need to get all of the evidence the police gathered any documentation surveillance wiretaps surveillance videos you name it analysis of the drugs search warrants i mean these packages can go on for sometimes thousands of pages in a more minor case like you know 100 pages or so the crown attorney is required to give us all that documentation the disclosure what you're facing essentially i sit down and the lawyers and i if their rep one of the other layers representing you and review that carefully we have to pour through it analyze it sometimes that takes many hours even in a minor case it's going to take several hours to formulate a proper legal opinion about the strengths and weaknesses of the case are there did the police make mistakes are there weaknesses are there charter issues are there search issues there's just a whole host of potential defenses to drug charges and then once i've completed that process which could take anywhere from a day to multi-days depending on the case i mean i have represented people with thousands of pages of documents on wiretaps and either that takes days and days to review but let's let's talk about a minor case i mean i probably in reviewed few quite a few hours then i sit down with you and start reviewing it with you provide the legal opinion are there are there defenses here what what can we do um what's the strengths and weakness case what are the odds of you winning at trial and i can basically give you basic odds within you know this is a slam dunk ground case there's no defense like you know they caught you red handed or it looks pretty good for us we've got a good search issue it's not slam dunk but it's certainly higher than 50 50 or you know what we've got some issues that could go either way depending on the judge or jury who's listing this case or we've got a chance i think the crown's got a better chance than us or you know what [Music] it's it's a strong crown case i'm obviously hopeful of finding flaws in the case that i can then approach the crown on to try and drop the charge so we receive your full background and it's always advantageous when you have no criminal record you're a person in good society we're going to talk about your background i i sometimes spend an hour or two getting a life history from the client because i want to review that with the crown that's important especially for a good background and i'm going to tell you the approach that i'm going to go with the crowning and say look i'm going to try and get the charges dropped because we got a pretty good chance to win if they won't drop them and they don't office a great deal you should probably just head to trial because i think we can win although there's risks there might be a 75 percent chance of winning which means there's a 25 chance of losing but let's see if the ground will drop this so i start meeting with the crown i got to be very careful what i say to the crown for because mistakes that the police make boil down to different issues that some of them can be fixed frankly so you if there's something flaw or technical issue in the disclosure that a police officer could fix or the crown might be able to fix and i won't give examples but there's just there's too many examples you can list i won't disclose that with them i'm going to say a client you know if we tell them about that that technical issue is going to be gone the officer can cover it off in their notes they can explain why they forgot to do that somehow in a clever way because right now it's a problem and i think we can win i might not disclose that with them but there's other mistakes that the police make that can't be fixed and i i'm there's no problem with me discussing that with the crown so you have to know as a defense player i think you learned very early on in your career what to discuss and what not to discuss with the crown i mean i'm sure i learned that my maybe the hard way as well when i was a crown actually you know you learn a lot of these things i was a crown for the first four years of my career and then a young defense lawyer i hope i've learned a lot since then too over the last 33 years i think i have but you never repeat your same mistakes if you've once disclosed one if you've ever in your career as a defense lawyer disclosed a flaw in the case that came back to bite you you'll never let that happen again believe me so i sit down with the crown if it's a mistake that i can review with them i know they can't fix i'm going to point it out to them i'm going to argue hopefully there's no reasonable prospect of conviction that's the test if there's no reasonable prospecting vision and it's not in the best interest of the public to proceed the crown should do the right thing withdraw the charge sometimes they do and sometimes they don't sometimes the crown goes to trial even when they've got a weak case because they just it's easier for them politically sometimes to run a case isn't it unfortunately so that's a great result if we can just get it withdrawn outright now another great result is if expect we can get the charge diverted meaning you know do some counseling upfront counseling charitable contribution community service and you know get it get it ultimately withdrawn that's a wonderful result no criminal record sometimes a conditional discharge is a great result as well depending on the case it results in no criminal record the crown's often willing to give a conditional discharge even on a half serious offense if there's no um if they think they've got a weaker case so it's all about plea bargain negotiation a skilled lawyer is able to do this they know what to say the crown when to say it when to pull back when to plead when to go to trial when not you've got to hire the right lawyer for this and that lawyer if they're able to depending on the county in some counties you can pick the crown that you're going to meet with you've got to know your county you've got to know your crown in other counties you can't some some have systems where it's randomly assigned the federal prosecutor's office randomly signs and they won't tell you who you're meeting with but i know the counties in our office does our other lawyers where we could actually pick the crown pick up the phone and talk to the one we want to meet with so we're often successful in doing this and there's just a whole host of ways of dropping this i mean there's illegal searches where the search warrant's invalid they stop a person on the sidewalk it's not a valid search circumstantial evidence is weak about who had possession situations in a vehicle where five people are in the vehicle and we don't know who had possession i mean i could go on and on there's so many defenses to drug charges i guarantee that if you hire our law firm we're going to find them we're going to we're going to point them out to you and we're going to approach the crown on the ones that can't be fixed to try and rest the best possible deal to avoid a criminal record and if we've got a winning case and the crowd is not willing to play ball we're going to vigorously fight for you at trial and and try and win your case so that's how to get a drug charges dropped i must say not every case has flaws in it but you'd be surprised at the number of drug charges that come across my desk and our other lawyer's desk over many years where we go wow the police made some serious ear errors here they're not fixable and i can get the crown probably to withdraw this charge or at least get diversion and a worst case scenario conditional discharge so that's how to get a drug charge dropped in ontario thank you for watching our video we are absolutely committed to bringing you the best possible criminal and dui educational videos if you found this video helpful please like it and subscribe to our youtube channel if you've been charged with the criminal offense in ontario and require our services please click on the link in the description below

Channel: Kruse Law

Views: 8,050

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Id: 8g8n-wWXjNE

Length: 8min 30sec (510 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021