War on Drugs: Is It Worth It?

Our office has handled many drug cases. We’ve handled everything from simple possession of marijuana (sometimes a petty misdemeanor, sometimes a felony) to huge drug conspiracies.

See some of our drug cases: State v. BVD, State v. MR, State v. TJ, State v. AM, State v. JHS, State v. G, State v. O, State v. S.

The bigger cases involved an incredible amount of resources and agencies by the government. The FBI, the BCA, various police agencies, confidential informants, and snitches are all employed by the government to investigate and prosecute these cases.

Usually, before we even get the case and often before our client even knows he or she is a suspect in the case, the government has hundreds of phone calls recorded, many controlled buys, dozens of scientific tests, surveillance videos, police reports, and people who they know will flip.

The government pours a ton of money and time into these cases. For what?

Each client wants to handle his or her case differently and have different goals. Some want to take the case to trial others want to cooperate with the government in order to get a lighter sentence.

Clients who want to cooperate, then, meet with the government, give them their knowledge, testify at trials, and help the government with other cases. This usually involves explaining how the drug conspiracy in question works, who the players are, and how the drugs travel. Before we walk in, the government already knows a lot about the drug conspiracy but there is a lot they don’t know because they haven’t been invited in. The session usually begins with questions to which the government already knows the answers; this is to make sure our client is going to tell the truth. Then the government will typically ask for names of people in pictures they already have, names of people in phone calls they have recorded, how much money is made by the conspirators, and how many drugs are being used and sold.

Sometimes, the government will ask our client if they have made any difference in taking down the drug conspiracy. The answer is almost always no. There is almost always someone ready to take our client’s place in the conspiracy. All the government tends to accomplish is putting a handful of people in prison, but a similar conspiracy is out there, just with different players.