can they do this?

I live in 29 Palms, California
last week the police came to my house look for a friend
on parole. They asked if they could look for him and I said
yes. The police didn't find him but they found A scale and less then A 1/4 gram of methamphetamines laying in the top
drawer of my office desk. Now I know they didn't think they
where going to find him in there. I got arrested for
HS11378 Poss cntl sub For sale and they kept the $568
dollers I had in my wallet for evidence. What could happen
to me? What should be my plan of action to beat this?

[Edited by Barry Burkhart on 03-11-2001 at 01:35 AM]

First, get a lawyer. The police are not allowed to go beyond the scope of the consent they got. This means that if they got your consent to look for a person, they can search places they are likely to find persons. Since they could not have expected to find the parolee in your desk drawer, they exceeded the scope of your consent. Your lawyer would want to bring a motion to suppress the meth on illegal search grounds. There is always the possibility, however, that the police will lie and say they found the meth on the desk, or that the desk drawer was wide open and they saw it in plain view. Then it is their word versus yours, and you probably know how that inevitably turns out.