A drug-related criminal conviction can crash through your life like a wrecking ball. You’ll probably lose your job and perhaps your freedom, and your criminal record can haunt you for years, perhaps even decades, to come. Even mere allegations of committing a drug-related offense could negatively impact your reputation and your relationships with family members and friends. With so much on the line, you need to be prepared to fight to shield yourself from the prosecution and the harsh penalties they’re threatening against you.

But how can you protect yourself in a drug case? The exact approach you take is going to depend on the facts of your case, but even if the evidence seems overwhelmingly in the prosecution’s favor, don’t gloss over assessing your criminal defense options. After all, there might still be a way for you to win.

Key defense strategy in a drug case

There’s no one-size fits all approach when it comes to building your criminal case. Instead, you need to custom tailor your approach to fit the circumstances at hand. That said, here are some defense strategies that you should consider implementing into your case if you can:

• Evidence suppression: This could be your golden ticket when facing drug charges. Here, you argue that evidence collected by the police was illegally seized in violation of your Constitutional rights, and therefore should be barred from being used against you at trial. If you succeed in suppressing evidence, you can crater the prosecution’s case. So, as you analyze the facts of your case, be sure to assess whether the police violated your rights in some way, such as by illegally initiating a traffic stop or conducting a search without a warrant or without a justifiable exception the warrant requirement.
• Witness credibility attacks: Even if the prosecution has physical evidence against you, they’re still going to need to present witness testimony. If you can find a way to attack the credibility of these witnesses, such as by showing motive, bias, inconsistent statements, or a troubling criminal history, then you can damage their reliability. This could cause the jury to give key witness testimony little weight, which could protect you from conviction.
• Chain of custody errors: When the police seize what they believe to be drugs from you, that substance has to undergo testing to confirm what it is. However, if the evidence is mishandled or stored improperly, then it can be compromised, thereby leading to erroneous testing results. If you can highlight these chain of custody errors, then you can diminish the reliability of the evidence. If the chain of custody errors are egregious, then you might be able to block the evidence from being used against you altogether.
• Entrapment: This occurs when the police induce you to commit a crime that you otherwise wouldn’t have committed. A sting operation doesn’t count as entrapment, but you might be able to argue entrapment if the police initiated the idea to buy or sell drugs, thereby persuading you to act illegally when you otherwise didn’t have any intention of doing so.

Don’t let prosecutors run you over in your drug case

Squaring off against aggressive and experienced prosecutors can be tough. But don’t let their confidence rattle you. Just stay focused on building the best criminal defense possible so that you can rest assured that you’re doing everything you can to protect your interests.