Our firm represents a lot of people who’ve been charged with either drug possession or drug trafficking, including possession for the purpose of trafficking. In fact, we’ve had we do have former drug prosecutors who work at our firm who have experiences prosecutors who are in our defense counsel. So the first question many clients asked us as of all criminal charges, you know, can I win this case at trial? And I want to refer you to another video we did a video on how to get drug charges dropped. So this is assuming the crowds not agreeable to withdraw the charge not agreeable to give us a great deal, diverting the out of out of the system and avoiding a record etc. So this is a case where which, for example, I’ve reviewed and determined that the charges are somewhat defendable at a viable, at least 50% mean, we guess we do, we sometimes go to trial at cases that are left and 50% chance, but most of my clients choose to for sure go to trial at 50%. So what do I do? What are the strategies? How do you win these cases? So Well, first and foremost, I get a hold of the disclosure. That is all of the police occurrence reports, police investigation, notes, surveillance, search warrants, you name it, whatever the police have uncovered in their evidence, which has been provided to the crown, the crowd is required to provide to me, and sometimes that package can consist of only 100 pages, sometimes it’s 1000s and complicated cases, drug conspiracies involving hundreds of pounds of cocaine, for example, is pretty complicated. You got wire caps, etc. So how do we win these cases? Well, once I have the disclosure, once I have all the disclosure, I’m in a position to review the case carefully. And see if the police number one meeting new mistakes. Are there some defenses that we can raise here? You know, did that? Is the search warrant valid? Did they have reasonable probable grounds for the search? Did they have grounds to search a vehicle or do they just wantonly search it? Can we exclude this a trial? One of the very most common defenses for any drug charges is it was an invalid search. So you’d be bringing, if you determine as a lawyer, that’s invalid search or the search warrants not valid, you’d bring a section eight charter applications to challenge the evidence and exclude it at trial under Section 24. Two of the charter, this is very common in drug cases, there’s no question because the police do make mistakes. They, they fill out invalid search warrants on occasions without reasonable proper grounds. They search vehicles or people without reasonable proper grounds. And a good lawyer, if that happens can often get that excluded, and there’s no case. So that’s one defense. Another defense is where you’re showing that the accused did not have knowledge and control knowledge and possession of the drug. So you need care control, which calls which requires knowledge and control of that drug. So for example, a common situation is where a house is rated, there’s multiple people in the home, one of your clients was in the home, maybe they live there, maybe they happen to be in the home. They’re not necessarily they’re not gonna be able to prove the case against them, they can’t be shown that they had knowledge control, it’s found in one room, they’re just at a party with the police normally do as they charge everyone found in the house, they have to because otherwise they know the guy charged the points fingers that someone else. So that’s a common scenario. That’s also common scenario scenario in cars when a car’s pulled over. And there’s a drug found on the floor, they wind up charging everyone if it’s not found in someone’s pocket, for example. And even if it is found in someone’s pocket, they may not have had grounds to to charge them and you can bring a charter application and get it thrown out. So there’s that and, you know, there’s also situations where a person is charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking, but the indicia of the traffic is not really there. I mean, they, they they overcharge the person who can win a trial to argue it, it’s just simple possession, they work trafficking, that drug, the pre police overcharge. So all of these are all of these issues are discussed with the client at our initial meeting. That’s one of many meetings that we use to prepare for trial and, you know, dozens sometimes meetings on a complex case but but handfuls of meetings, even on a most minor charge, we after repair the client to testify and in the months leading up to trial that takes a lot of time as well. You need he needs to be property or she needs to be properly prepared by the defense counsel. They need to go through examination and chief. They need to go through cross examination, mock cross examination, showing them their heirs, what the crowd how the crowd is going to attack them and actually break them down in the office and build them up and make it makes them a good witness. This is all part of defense counsel, you can’t just put a person, even when a person is telling the truth, you just don’t throw them up in the witness stand there going to be a disaster. A good lawyer, a good criminal lawyer can destroy a truthful witness who’s not prepared. It’s as simple as that. I’ve seen it time and time again, on the witness stand over the years. There’s no question that happens all the time. So you know, the client, I went, after I my initial meeting, I want them to review that disclosure very carefully, by themselves in the office that may take multiple meanings. If it’s extensive medium, it may take 50 hours on a big case, frankly. But on a more minor case, it might take a day, they write their statement out for me, we then go through multiple revisions of that I refresh their memory, we get it in the in the format we want. So the disclosure coupled with the client statement becomes my roadmap for defending the case. If it’s an illegal search case, I file a charter application at least 30 days before the trial with case law, written submissions. And we argue that trial to get the drug thrown out, if it’s a lack of knowledge or possession case, we argue that the trial that the client might testify, it’s not mine, I didn’t have an army. It’s a weak circumstantial case. There’s many ways of attacking these cases, including, often, unfortunately, attacking the credibility and reliability of police officers. I mean, police officers, just like a normal witness, we prepare for them. You know, we try and creating consistencies and probabilities in their version of events as well. So there’s a whole host of ways to to challenge and when create reasonable doubt on a drug cases. And I’ve gone through a few of them with you at this point. And I can tell you this, that, you know, drug cases running, they fall under two categories, usually it’s, you know, it’s often a very strong count case, I’m telling my clients to plead guilty. If there’s gray areas of winning, we can often win those and sometimes the crowd, as I said in my video about dropping the charges, if there’s gray areas, reasonable doubt, sometimes the credit cut is a very good deal. Sometimes they’ll even withdraw the charges if there’s not a strong reasonable prospect. But these cases can often be won a trial in the hands of a good wire, it’s very important to get the higher lawyer knows what the heck they’re doing. There’s There’s 1000s of cases on illegal searches. And if your lawyer knows them, and can apply them to your facts, you can often you can often when and create a reasonable doubt, the burden of proof is in your favor. The Crown has approved the case beyond a reasonable doubt. So if there’s a if the judge ultimately or the jury is not sure they’re not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, you can win. If you take the witness stand and the judge can’t completely reject your evidence. I don’t, I don’t even believe that person. But they’re still left with a reasonable doubt for the rest of the case. You win. If you take the witness stand on the WD test for Supreme Court of Canada. And, you know, the judge says I you know, I don’t really believe the accused, but I’m left in some reasonable doubt you win another as the judges saying you’re probably guilty. That’s why some of these cases many of these cases can be one because of our burden of proof and, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt. So that’s a kind of a short summary of how we can potentially win your drug case. 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 a criminal offence in Ontario and require our services, please click on the link in the description below.
