Drug / Narcotic Charges A GOOD LAWYER MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE

 Our New York and Westchester Criminal Defense Lawyers  have extensive experience in handling the criminal defense of drug charges including both misdemeanors and felonies in the New York Metropolitan area including the New York City Courts (Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan) and Westchester including the Criminal Courts of White Plains, New Rochelle, Mount Vernon, Yonkers, Scarsdale, Valhalla, Greenburgh, Mount Kisco, Rye, Port Chester and Armonk. So whether you are a casual user, someone struggling with addiction or sold drugs, if you were arrested and are facing a drug charge in New York, our criminal defense attorneys can get you through this with the best possible outcome and minimize the impact of the criminal charges on your life.  

As New York and Westchester Criminal Defense Attorneys, we provide aggressive representation of drug and narcotic charges. Drug charges range from basic misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance to felony-level drug possession based upon the weight or amounts of the drug possessed and sale of controlled substance. Whether you have a first time pot arrest or were caught with oxycodone, heroin or crystal meth, our drug defense lawyers have the experience to get you a good outcome.

FIGHTING THE CASE   

Since drug charges require knowing possession of drugs, the cases which are the most defensible are where drugs were found on one person in a group, or in a car occupied by multiple people and everyone is arrested and charged.  One of the most common defenses is lack of knowledge or possession. Often when the police find drugs in a car or an apartment, they will arrest everyone in the car or who was present in the apartment, if no one admits that the drugs were theirs. However, merely being in a car  or other location where there are drugs is not a crime, so long as the drugs are not out in the open. To convict someone of possession of drugs, the prosecutor must prove you knew the drugs were there. These cases can be defended by testimony that the defendant knew nothing about the drugs.

Another common defense, that our New York City and Westchester criminal defense attorneys have utilized is challenging the underlying search, during which the drugs were found, as unconstitutional. This means that if a Court agrees that there wasn't probable cause for a police officer to perform a search, then, the drugs will likely be suppressed and the charges dismissed. Search and seizure issues are common and each case requires an extensive analysis of the underlying facts. Since most drugs are found as a result of a search, issues regarding the validity of search warrants must be thoroughly investigated. Also stop and frisk seizures often implicate constitutional challenges, as do searches based on traffic stops. So if a case has to be litigated, the central issue is whether there was probable cause for the underlying stop and search. Often if the evidence is suppressed, there is no case.