People facing drug crime charges who were victims of unlawful search or seizure may wonder, “What role does search and seizure law play in drug cases?” Under the Fourth Amendment, search and seizure law protects you from unreasonable searches and seizures by law enforcement officers. The Minnesota constitution provides similar protections.
If you have been subjected to an illegal search or seizure and charged with a drug crime, you have the legal right to fight the search, warrant, or any evidence obtained. An experienced drug crime lawyer can determine if the law enforcement officer subjected you to unreasonable search and seizure and, if so, file a motion to suppress the evidence obtained.
If you were subjected to unlawful search and seizure and charged with a drug crime, you can count on Keller Criminal Defense Attorneys for vigorous legal representation. We have decades of experience defending people facing drug crime charges in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Minnesota at large. Call us at (952) 913-1421 to schedule a free consultation.
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How Do Search and Seizure Laws Work in Minnesota?
The Fourth Amendment protects your right to privacy, including freedom from unlawful searches and seizures in drug cases. This law applies to American citizens and non-citizens. It also applies to any illegal searches or seizures if you’re stopped by a law enforcement officer when driving your car.
In Minnesota, a law enforcement officer can only search or seize property if he or she has probable cause or reasonable suspicion that an individual or group is involved in a crime. There is a distinction between probable cause and reasonable suspicion.
Probable cause – An officer can have probable cause to search a home or vehicle or pat a suspect down if the officer believes that a crime has been committed, is taking place, or is being planned.
Reasonable suspicion – Any reasonable individual can suspect that a drug crime was committed, is ongoing, or will be committed. In such a case, law enforcement can search the home or vehicle for drugs, weapons, cash, or other drug paraphernalia. If a suspected trafficker provides answers to nullify an officer’s reasonable suspicion, the officer must immediately release the individual.
Since the Fourth Amendment offers protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, a police officer can only proceed with a search if the officer has a valid warrant. A warrant is a legal document that guides the search and law enforcement actions during the search. The warrant details:
- Location of the search
- When and how long the search should take
- When the warrant to search expires
- The items or individuals targeted by the search
- Other critical details or special conditions that may affect the authority to search
Exceptions to the Warrant Requirement for Searches and Seizures
Although an investigative team in a drug case requires a search warrant, exceptional situations require no warrant to conduct a search and seizure in drug offenses. Some of these circumstances include:
Personal Consent
A police officer may proceed to search without a warrant if the officer has reasonable suspicion to search, and you voluntarily consent. The consent must, however, come from someone with legal authority.
A Search During a Lawful Arrest
Police officers can search you, your home, or your car during a lawful arrest. They can also seize weapons to protect themselves and prevent anyone from tampering with or destroying the evidence.
Automobile Exception
A police officer may not need a search warrant if a car suspected to have been used in drug trafficking is believed to contain evidence, and there’s a high likelihood of it getting driven away before a warrant is issued. The automobile exception also applies to containers on trucks.
Exigent Circumstances
In emergencies where someone’s life might be endangered or his or her safety is at risk, law enforcement officials may search a premise or property immediately. In such cases, there’s usually no time to wait for a court-issued warrant.
How Do Search and Seizure Laws Impact Drug Cases in Minnesota?
Search and seizure laws in Minnesota protect people’s rights to privacy independently of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Since we are talking about legal rights, Minnesota’s state constitution provides separate and stronger laws that impact drug crimes. For every right, there must be a remedy in case that right has been violated by anyone, including law enforcement officers.
The Exclusionary Rule in Drug Cases
If you’ve been subjected to an unconstitutional search or seizure, you can challenge law enforcement actions and even have the evidence suppressed under the exclusionary rule in drug cases. Like the Fourth Amendment, Minnesota law protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. However, sections in the state constitution provide a higher level of protection from unlawful searches and remedies when that right is violated.
Consider the following example: You get arrested in Minneapolis due to an outstanding warrant that expired months ago. Because of a clerical error that the court clerk failed to communicate to law enforcement officers, the police searched you or your property and found a controlled substance. You get prosecuted in court. Such a search is unlawful, but the police officer didn’t do anything unlawful intentionally. It’s simply that the miscommunication between the court and law enforcement led to an unconstitutional search.
In such a case, you can exercise the exclusionary rule and have the evidence collected during the illegal search suppressed. In fact, if your Fourth Amendment rights are violated, you can file a civil rights lawsuit under federal law for any damages you sustain, so long as you satisfy the requirements. Basically, the exclusionary rule protects you from unconstitutional searches and misconduct by the police during the search.
The “Good Faith” Exception
In the example mentioned above, the officer didn’t intentionally violate your rights; it was the court’s administrative error that led to the illegal search. Since the search discovered regulated substances, the court may find the evidence collected admissible under the “good faith” exception rule.
Under Minnesota law, the “good faith” exception is justified because the officer acted responsibly, even if the search was unlawful. According to the court, tossing the evidence away demoralizes the officer, and the officer may not be incentivized to act any differently in the future. Besides, suppressing the evidence and freeing a guilty drug trafficker can pose public safety risks. The individual is likely to break the law again, knowing that if he or she gets caught in a similar encounter with the police, he or she will be freed.
Defense Strategies Your Lawyer Can Use in Your Drug Case
Challenging the evidence obtained in an unlawful search is one of the legal measures a drug crime lawyer takes to win a case. Seasoned lawyers know how to get a drug trafficking charge dismissed. Strategies they may use include:
Denial of Drug Ownership/Possession
Your lawyer may advise you to argue that the drugs obtained during a search and seizure were not yours, or that you had no idea that you had the drugs at the time of the search. However, this defense is only effective if the court establishes that you knew nothing about the drugs in the first place.
Chain of Custody
The prosecution must prove you’re guilty beyond a reasonable doubt to be convicted in a criminal case. In a drug case, your lawyer will challenge the prosecution to provide documentation detailing how it collected, handled, and stored evidence. Failure to do so may raise concerns about the chain of custody and the similarity between the pieces of evidence collected during the search and the ones presented before the jury.
Entrapment
Your criminal defense attorney can also argue that you were coerced into engaging in drug-related activities that you would have, under ordinary circumstances, avoided. Proving entrapment can be very challenging, especially if you have a criminal history of drug possession.
Crime Lab Analysis
Sometimes, the pieces of evidence that the prosecution presents in a drug case might raise various questions, demanding a crime lab analysis. Possession of coke is a felony in Minnesota, but that doesn’t mean that simply because you were caught with a white powder, you had cocaine on you. The prosecution must prove a substance’s chemical composition by taking the evidence to a lab for chemical analysis. In case there’s an issue in proving the evidence, your lawyer can use that to your advantage.
Criminal law governing drug cases, especially searches and seizures, can be foreign and confusing to a non-lawyer. Your best shot at winning your case or otherwise getting a favorable outcome is to work with a lawyer familiar with the search and seizure law and how it impacts drug cases.
Our attorneys at Keller Criminal Defense Attorneys are experienced in federal and state drug laws and can help you fight unlawful search and seizure. Contact us for an aggressive legal representation.
