Articles Posted in Controlled Dangerous Substances (CDS)

As an Aggressive Maryland Criminal Lawyer, I have represented hundreds of defendants charged with Possession with the Intent to Distribute Controlled Dangerous Substances over the past 16 years. These are very serious cases, often involving complicated Fourth Amendment, illegal search and seizure issues. They are also cases that can carry lengthy mandatory sentences that must be served without the possibility of parole, particularly for repeat offenders. It is imperative that a person charged with one of these serious offenses take the time and care to ensure that they are represented by an attorney who has both the experience and the expertise to handle such a case. I strongly recommend that as in the case of being diagnosed with a serious illness, someone charged with a Felony such as Possession with the Intent to Distribute, should seek out at least two opinions from an attorney who is a specialists in both criminal law and the jurisdiction in which the person is charged.

I have blogged many times in the past about situations in which people find that they are being represented by an attorney who is not qualified to handle their case. Sometimes the individual is fortunate enough to find out before the case goes to trial. Others don’t realize the mistake until they walk out a different door than the one they came in accompanied by two armed deputy sheriff’s.

I was recently retained by an individual who figured out that he did not have the right lawyer just before his trial date. He is a repeat offender but has an extremely defensible case. Luckily for him, we were able to secure a postponement of his trial date to explore those defenses. Below is the memorandum of law we filed in support of our motion to suppress evidence based on the Fourth Amendment violations. We believe that their is a high probability that the evidence in this case will be suppressed. Even if the State prevails on those issues, the drugs in question were found in a secret compartment of a car that my client was driving but does not own so it is difficult to see how the State can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he possessed those drugs at all, much less that he possessed them with the intent to distribute them. In spite of all of this, my client’s previous lawyer, who is not a criminal specialist, told him he should plead guilty to a mandatory 10 year prison sentence!
Here is the memorandum. I have removed the names, date and location of the offense to safeguard my client’s privacy.
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Can the Police search your car without a warrant? As a Criminal Defense Attorney, this is one of the questions that I am asked most often. The answer to the question is generally speaking yes so long as the police have probable cause. This is an exception to the warrant requirement in the Constitution known as the Automobile Exception. The rationale is that unlike a person’s home for instance, automobiles are by their very nature movable objects creating a sort of inherent exigency that justifies allowing police to search without requiring them to leave the scene to obtain a warrant.

While the automobile exception is certainly a long recognized exception to the warrant requirement, it does not mean that the police can search a person’s car without a warrant in every situation. As I said, the police must have probable cause or some other basis upon which to rely to search the vehicle. One common situation in which police search a person’s vehicle without probable cause is the so called “search incident to arrest”. However, the Supreme Court recently changed the rules regarding searches incident to arrest in a very significant way in a case called Arizona v. Gant. Prior to Gant the police would routinely search a person’s car after affecting a lawful arrest, even if the arrest was for relatively minor traffic offenses such as driving while on a suspended license. In the Gant case, the Court limited the searches incident to arrest to situations in which the person arrested was within reaching distance of the passenger compartment a the time of the search and it was reasonable to believe that the vehicle contained evidence of the offense for which the person was being arrested. I successfully defended a client charged with Possession with the Intent to Distribute Marijuana utilizing this new case in Baltimore City Circuit Court last week. Here are the facts:
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Baltimore Maryland Criminal Attorney discusses case evaluation and the plea bargain process. The ability to objectively and dispassionately evaluate a case is critical to being an effective criminal defense attorney. Far too often I witness inexperienced or simply ineffective attorneys taking cases to trial only to pursue defenses that have no realistic chance of success. The unavoidable fact of this business is that sometimes your client is guilty as charged and the State can easily prove it. In defense attorney parlance these are known as “dead up cases”. Criminal defense attorneys need to recognize and accept that this is true when confronted with such a case and advise their clients honestly as to their situation.

This is not to say that there is nothing an attorney can do for their client in a situation like this – far from it. I have represented thousands of clients throughout my career who have been able to significantly reduce the consequences of a conviction by recognizing that trial was not an option and pursuing an effective strategy to minimize the damage. I had a case last week that is a terrific example of this in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County. The client accepted the situation as I explained it to him and did what I told him to do and it worked out extremely favorably by any measure. Here are the facts:
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As an Aggressive Maryland Criminal Attorney, I represent people charged with violations of the controlled dangerous substance laws virtually every day in Maryland courts. I have blogged many times in the past about the importance of hiring an experienced full time criminal attorney if one finds him or herself charged in a criminal case. As I have noted in the past, I witness far too many instances in which accident or divorce lawyers represent (or should I say misrepresent) people in criminal cases and it usually doesn’t work out very well for the person charged.

I had an a case today in Baltimore County Circuit Court that was an excellent example of a person realizing before it was too late that her attorney was not really qualified to represent her. This is unusual. More often than not, people don’t figure it out until they suffer a very bad result. Here are the facts of the case.
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As an Experienced Baltimore Maryland Criminal Defense Attorney I have often written about the mistakes that are made by inexperienced attorneys when representing people in criminal cases. I often pose the question, “did you hire the right lawyer to represent you?”. In many of my previous postings I have written about cases in which the criminal defendant has hired an attorney who was in reality a domestic (divorce/child custody) attorney, an accident attorney or a general practitioner, who had claimed to be experienced in criminal defense. Upon closer inspection of his or her case history, these claims turned out to be false.

Recently I have become aware of several instances of poor representation in cases where the criminal defendant hires an attorney who sends him an unsolicited letter shortly after they are charged in a criminal case. These “letter lawyers” as they are known, very often offer legal services at well below the customary fee charged by experienced criminal lawyers. The reason for this in most instances is that the attorneys sending these letters are inexperienced (many are just out of law school) and are unable to attract criminal clients any other way. Truly experienced criminal defense attorneys are able to get most of their clients from referrals from past satisfied clients or from people who do the necessary research to find a qualified lawyer to represent them. And as the old adage goes, “you get what you pay for”, as very often these inexperienced attorneys do what one would expect from an inexperienced attorney and that is, they make mistakes.

I have written in this blog about many instances where the mistakes made by “letter lawyers” or other inexperienced lawyers are immediately apparent – usually because the defendant ended up in jail on a case where he wouldn’t have had he been properly represented by a criminal defense specialist. In other cases the mistake may not become apparent for many months or even many years after the case is mishandled. I was recently hired by a client who falls into this latter category. Here are the facts:
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https://www.silvermanthompson.com/lawyer-attorney-1300820.htmlExperienced Maryland Criminal Attorney’s probably handle more simple drug possession cases than just about any other kind of case in the system. On any given District Court Docket in any jurisdiction in Maryland, a large percentage of the cases will be simple possession cases. Although the majority of these cases so not result in incarceration of the defendant they nonetheless need to be taken seriously as a conviction for possession can result in a permanent criminal record even for first time offenders. Second or subsequent offenders are all but certain to end up with a permanent criminal record and possible jail time, as Maryland Law only allows a person to receive probation before judgment one time for a drug conviction whether it be possession of CDS or possession of CDS with the intent to distribute.

I successfully defended a case in Baltimore County District Court this week in which my client was in this exact position. He was charged with simple possession of marijuana having been caught by the police with just a few grams of the banned substance. Unfortunately for him, he had received probation before judgment for a possession charge a few years ago and was therefore barred by law from receiving this disposition a second time. Here are the facts:
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As a Former Assistant United State’s Attorney and current Maryland Federal Criminal Attorney I have handled hundreds of Federal Drug Cases. Before as a prosecutor and now as a defense attorney I am often amazed at how quickly and often lawyers plead their client’s guiilty in highly defensible cases.

I take the opposite approach and employ a scorched earth policy of fighting every case on every level before even considering a plea to include attacking the validity of search warrants which many attorneys never even consider. Here is a written motion to suppress we filed in a case recently attacking the warrant and moving to suppress the evidence.
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Baltimore Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys/Lawyers are often called upon to represent defendants who are charged with manufacturing a controlled dangerous substance. Most of these cases involve the growing of Marijuana as this one did, but some involve the manufacture of methamphetamines or other drugs.

The case I had last week occurred on the West side of Baltimore County. My client, who is a 40 year old father of 3 with a college degree and various professional licenses to protect, was accused of growing 6 marijuana plants in his back yard. Unfortunately, Maryland law does not differentiate between manufacturing controlled dangerous substances for personal use and manufacturing for the purpose of distribution. Any manufacturing activity, including the growing of just one or a few marijuana plants is a felony under Maryland Law. Needless to say, the stakes were very high for the client in spite of the very small number of plants involved because a conviction would result in him having a felony on his record which would have a devastating effect on his career even if he avoided jail. Here are the facts:
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Since I have been doing this Baltimore Maryland Criminal attorney/lawyer blog I have often been chided by my friends on the other side of the aisle (This is for you Joey D.) for only blogging about the cases that I win. So, in an attempt to show a little balance and humility, I will discuss a case that I lost the other day in this posting. The real reason I do this is to illustrate the point that a good criminal defense attorney always has a Plan B no matter how strong a case he believes he has. In other words, even in cases that I am confident that I will prevail, I always consider the possibility that we will lose and think about how to minimize the damage to the client if that should occur.

I had just such a case this week in Baltimore County Circuit Court. My client was charged with possession with the intent to distribute marijuana. I believed, and still believe, that I had an overwhelming case for suppression of the evidence because I believed the police had stopped my client without probable cause or even the lesser standard known as reasonable articulable suspicion, which allows police in certain circumstances to briefly detain a suspect for investigatory purposes. The facts of the case were as follows:
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Of all of the cases that Baltimore Maryland Criminal Attorneys/Lawyers are called upon to handle, some of the most difficult are cases involving repeat offenders in drug distribution cases. In Maryland, if a person who has been previously convicted of a either possession with the intent to distribute a narcotic such as heroin, cocaine or prescription controlled dangerous substances, is again charged, he will likely face a mandatory jail sentence that must be served without the possibility of parole. Some jurisdiction such as Baltimore County, pursue these mandatory sentences in virtually every case. Other jurisdictions such as Baltimore City more often than not use the threat of invoking the mandatory sentence to pressure defendants into plea bargain on terms that prosecutors view as favorable.

In Maryland, in cases where a person is charged with distribution of or possession with intent to distribute narcotics such as cocaine, heroin or prescription drugs, a second offender will be subject to 10 years in prison without the possibility of parole. A third offender is subject to a mandatory 25 year sentence without parole and a person with 4 or more convictions faces 40 years. However, in cases involving second offenders, a defendant who is convicted may be eligible for a modification of that sentence if the person is found to be in need of drug treatment by the Department of Health and Mental Hygene and to be sufficiently motivated to take advantage of the opportunity to receive treatment.
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