PLEASE HELP (mj distrib offense)

[unhappyinva]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Virginia

Please help me with this.

I got pulled over around midnite 4 days ago for a illegal exhaust. My exhaust tho is 100%legal guarenteed (stock on a very boring old mazda). After they pulled me over they asked to search the car and I refused. There was a canine unit there about 2 minutes after they pulled me over and they told us to get out and the dog Id'ed the car immediately.

They handcuffed me and my friend searched the car found a large quantity of mj plus various paraphenalia.

Got charged with felony possession with intent to distribute, got arrested blah blah.

I need to know what I can do about this. I am on pretrial, and got assigned a public defender but I have a little bit of funds and might be able to afford a cheap lawyer. I need to know if its possible to get out of this charge. The exhaust court date is in 27 days and the felony court date is a month and 27 days. Anyone with real advice or knowledge please help me.

The rest of my life is in the balance.What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?

 

[CdwJava]

The time frame of the detention on a traffic stop (2 minutes) is not excessive, so no help there ... so long as the officers were engaged in performing actions pursuant to the stop (running records, planning to write a citation, etc.).

Now, if they got you out of the car and put the dog IN the car without your consent, then that could constitute a bad search. But, if the dog was run around the exterior of the car first, alerted on the exterior and THEN was put inside, that may be good.

Issues the defense could raise would likely include the validity of the stop (and whether a reasonable officer would believe the exhaust had been modified or was otherwise in violation of the law), the validity of the detention, and the reliability of the search (the officer's and the dog's training and record of reliable alerts).

Your attorney should know best how to handle this.

Moral of this story: Get out of the dope dealing business.

- Carl