Expert witnesses are often brought in by both the prosecution and the defense in a drug crime case. If you’re being charged with any drug crime, it’s important to work with a very experienced Oklahoma City criminal defense lawyer not only to get the best expert witnesses to defend you but also to challenge any expert witnesses the other side may bring against you.
How Can Oklahoma City Expert Witnesses Help Defend Marijuana Trafficking Charges?
An expert witness is just someone the court considers to have special expertise in a particular area. There isn’t really a standard legal definition for this, but the court will consider education, experience, training, and research experience of an expert witness in a particular field. The more of all this an expert witness has, the more weight their testimony will carry.
It’s essential to understand that the prosecution will almost certainly bring expert witnesses to testify against you, but these are not exactly unbiased witnesses. Many times these expert witnesses are ex-police or those who used to work in criminal forensics and who are paid by the state and highly biased in favor of bringing a conviction.
If you choose a lawyer with extensive drug charge experience, you can count on them to have a network of experienced expert witnesses to call upon who have the kind of expertise and training that convinces judges and juries. It may be impossible for you to get witnesses of this type on your own, and this is one of the chief benefits of having an experienced lawyer.
Here’s what these experts can do for you:
Provide Background Insight
The first way an expert can help is by helping jurors or judges to understand details they are not equipped to understand as lay persons. This will include providing them background information that’s important for them to fully understand what happened and what’s at stake. The witness’ testimony may be about drugs, about drug distribution or manufacturing, the effects that drugs can have on a person, or even expert testimony about the tactics that police officers use in these sorts of investigations.
Some of the arguments your lawyer may bring in your defense can be scientifically subtle and difficult for a jury to understand without some help. One of the key roles of an expert witness is to take all that complicated information and make it accessible and clear to the average person in the courtroom.
By Harming the Prosecution’s Case
It’s always important to remember that you do not have to prove you are innocent in these cases. The responsibility lies with the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you are guilty. This is actually quite a high bar, and in most cases a good defense doesn’t necessarily try to prove but just to disprove. In other words, your lawyer will be trying to poke enough holes in the prosecution’s case that jurors will have reasonable doubt about what the prosecutor is trying to argue.
A good expert witness can hurt the prosecution’s case in several ways. For one thing, just getting one has occasionally caused a prosecutor to drop charges entirely. If the prosecution knows that their evidence is tenuous, they may realize it will not stand up to expert scrutiny in court. An expert can also cast doubt on the evidence itself, the way it was collected, the accuracy of methods used to test it, the limitations and inaccuracies of testing, the importance of chain of custody and what potential there is for a mistake if chain of custody is broken, and much more.
Types of Expert Witnesses in Drug Cases
All kinds of expert witnesses can be called in for a drug case, and the details will depend on your case and its specifics. Your lawyer will be able to give you more details based on your circumstances, but these are a few of the expert witnesses you might see testify:
Forensic Toxicologists
A toxicologist is someone who is studies drugs, and a forensic toxicologist studies them particularly in a legal setting and can bring testimony about how drugs can affect your behavior and how they are processed. Toxicologists are usually brought in to analyze the results of drug tests or to help explain your behavior during an investigation and arrest.
A forensic toxicologist may be able to show the potential for error in the way that a defendant was tested for drugs or how these tests were collected, stored, or analyzed. A toxicologist will also be very familiar with the medical conditions and prescription drugs that can mimic the effects of marijuana or lead to a false positive in a drug test.
General Medical Experts
A medical expert will typically be a doctor, and they are often called in with drug cases to analyze a defendant’s medical history. This may have bearing on why you were pulled over in the first place or upon your behavior during the process. If your health is any kind of factor in any part of the charges against you, a medical expert can help.
Pharmacologists
Mental Health Experts
There are a number of other types of expert witnesses that could be brought, and it will all depend on your case and the specific details.
What Your Criminal Defense Lawyer Will Do
A criminal defense lawyer is your best defense in these situations. Your lawyer will build, organize, and present your defense. This can include doing an investigation of the entire incident and the behavior of law enforcement as well as soliciting the testimony of anyone from former police officers to lab technicians, doctors, psychologists, or other professionals. Most importantly, your lawyer will know what to do with all this testimony and how to use it in your defense.
Your lawyer will also begin defending you from the moment you call and protect you from saying anything to the police or prosecution that could be used against you. A good lawyer knows how to negotiate with prosecutors by pointing out flaws in their case and demonstrating how difficult it will be to get a conviction. In a best-case scenario, this can mean charges are dropped entirely. More often, a plea deal can be worked out where lower charges are brought.