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the advice of a public defender

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TILLY22

Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? california
a confidential informant claimed to have purchased drugs from me so the police obtained a search warrant and searched my home and found drugs. Originally I was charged with selling drugs but recently that charged has been reduced to possessing drugs. the police calimed that a the informant was shown a dmv photo of a person who's name is different than mine and who is on parole with a long criminal history. supposedly the informant identified the person in the photo as the same person who sold him/or her the drugs the police claim that I am that person. which is how they we able to get the warrant to search my home. The charges were reduced to possession after my finger prints were taken which proved that I was not the person in the dmv photo that was shown to the informant and it also proved that I do not have a criminal history nor have I ever been on parole. My public defender tells me that I should accept the reduced charge which means all I need to do is complete a prop 36 class and he adviced me not to fight this case his reason for me doing this is because if reject the offer it will mean that the district attny. will have time to look over the search warrant and once he reads what is written in it he will take back the reduced charge of possession and follow through with charging me with sales a case he claims I have no chance of winning. That to me makes no sense. especially his claim that the D.A. has not yet read the search warrant. Here is my question. What should I do? I am not the person who the informant identified as being the person who sold him/or her the drugs and my finger prints have already proven that. I believe that my only involvement came in the way of me selling a truck to someone who drove it to sell the informant the drugs, a truck that was still registered to me and that is how the police got my address, when they ran the plates.
 


CdwJava

Senior Member
Your attorney knows the case and the court better than any of us do.

See, here's the rub, if you refuse the offer to possession they just might go back to the sales case. Maybe they can make it, maybe they can't. But, is it a gamble you want to take?

From what you write it seems the officers acted in good faith. They obtained a warrant based on the CI's identifying a photo of someone that looked enough like you to force fingerprints to tell the two of you apart, and that sounds like a reasonable identification to me. Plus, when they searched your residence they found drugs. Sounds to me like there is a case to be made for sales and an argument to be made that he picked someone that looks so much like you out of a lineup that it could well have been you.

As the line goes, "Do you feel lucky?"
 

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