Police officers search your house. While inside, they find illegal drugs. They take those drugs as evidence, arrest you and tell you that you’re looking at years behind bars.
To you, this feels like a very open-and-shut case. After all, the police have clear evidence that you had illegal substances. Does this mean you’re guaranteed to be convicted?
Criminal law is much more complex
In many cases, the law is a lot more complex than simply looking at evidence. For example, it may depend on how the evidence was gathered.
Say that police officers did not get your consent to enter the house, it wasn’t an emergency situation and they did not have a search warrant. The officer just felt confident that there were drugs in the house – and they were proven correct.
Under the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine , that officer may have violated your rights. They conducted an illegal search of your home. This may mean that any evidence gathered during the search can’t be used during your trial.
But the police may not have any other evidence that you had illegal drugs in the first place. They have already confiscated them, and that bust was the focus of their entire investigation. If that evidence was illegally gathered, you may not be convicted because they can’t use their only evidence against you.
Your defense options moving forward
This is just one example, but it helps to show how the law can become very complicated and why you need to know exactly what defense options you have when facing charges.
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