Laboratory Analysis and Challenging Drug Charges

Drug charges carry some of the harshest sentencing of any nonviolent crime in America, often unjustly resulting in years of incarceration. It is no exaggeration to say that you must always fight drug charges to protect your rights, no matter how strong the evidence against you may seem.

In many instances, you can weaken the case against you by carefully casting doubt on that evidence and pushing back against the prosecution in persistent, creative ways. Of course, the sooner that you begin building a strong legal defense, the more time that you have to develop a strategy and implement it. You should not wait even a single day to begin constructing your defense, unless you want to make it easier for the prosecution to punish you harshly, possibly for a crime you did not commit.

Pushing back against the prosecution can take many forms. You may have grounds to challenge the methods that police used to obtain the evidence, or the arresting officer’s conduct, if it violated your rights or was outside of the protocols that police must follow. It is also possible to challenge the evidence against you by requesting laboratory analysis of the evidence itself.

Why use laboratory analysis?

In order for the prosecution to successfully build a case against you, the substances that it collects on the scene and presents as evidence must match the charges against you. Requesting laboratory analysis provides a number of opportunities.

First, it forces the prosecution to physically produce the evidence, which may work in your favor. If the arresting officer or some other individual within the police or the prosecution did not handle the evidence properly, a court may agree to toss the evidence out, or a clerical error may mean that the prosecution cannot find the evidence and, therefore, cannot present it. While these errors are not common, they do occur.

However, laboratory analysis is also useful in challenging the type of substance the arresting officer charged you with possessing. If the results determine that it is not the same substance in your charges, courts may agree to dismiss it from evidence. You may also have opportunities to challenge the laboratory’s methods, which can create other legal options.

Protect your future with action now

In most cases, there are many points you may challenge when it comes to the evidence against you. Unfortunately, the longer that you wait to begin building your defense, the more time you give to the prosecution, who are paid to build strong cases against defendants.

You must begin building your own legal defense today to help ensure that you have as much time as possible to review the evidence against you and keep your rights protected while you fight for your future.

Leave a Comment