Surveillance footage is a powerful tool in criminal investigations, including marijuana trafficking cases. It captures real-time events and is considered a very reliable “witness,” since it can’t change its story. At the same time, each camera only captures an event from one angle, and that’s just one of the limitations. Talk to a criminal defense lawyer in Oklahoma City to learn more about how surveillance footage might be used as evidence against you (or how your lawyer might use it to defend you!).
How Can Surveillance Footage Be Used in a Marijuana Trafficking Case?
Surveillance footage often comes from security cameras in public places, private properties, or even at law enforcement setups where hidden cameras have been strategically placed. In marijuana trafficking cases, it’s not uncommon for the police to intentionally monitor suspects or areas that are known for drug activity. Footage is useful to the police if it shows a suspect handling packages, meeting with others, or loading vehicles. Visual evidence also helps investigators identify suspects, track their movements, and establish patterns of behavior.
Using Footage: The Prosecution
To Establish There’s Been Criminal Activity
To bring a case for trafficking, technically, the prosecution only needs to show that a person had 25 pounds or more of marijuana in their possession. The volume alone is enough to trigger the charge. However, if all they have is the marijuana itself, it can be difficult to be certain of getting a conviction. There are many defenses that can be brought, particularly if the marijuana wasn’t actually found on the person but rather in a shared space, like a drawer in a house or the trunk of a car that more than one person was authorized to drive.
Surveillance footage can show actual behaviors that imply that trafficking was taking place, like frequent meetings with multiple people, large quantities of marijuana being moved, or suspicious packaging being put into a vehicle or brought into a home by a specific person. By combining this with other evidence, like seized marijuana or text messages, prosecutors can build a stronger case.
To Establish Identity
The other key function of surveillance footage for the prosecution is to actually identify people who are involved. If the footage is good and clear, it can be fairly ironclad when it comes to identifying a particular person or persons. Of course, a lot of surveillance footage is not actually that clear, and if the person never looks at the camera directly, it can be difficult to establish identity beyond any reasonable doubt.
Using Footage: The Defense
Challenging the Interpretation
While prosecutors may try to use footage to prove guilt, a skilled defense lawyer can often turn it into a powerful defense tool. Footage that might seem incriminating at first often seems a lot less so once an experienced criminal defense lawyer challenges the prosecution’s interpretation of what everyone is seeing. The goal is to create reasonable doubt so the jury must legitimately question whether the video shows what the prosecution says it does.
For example, if the video shows someone handing a bag to another, the lawyer will bring up an obvious question: what proof is there the bag contains marijuana, and not, say, clothes? Even if the bag in the video appears to be similar to a bag found full of marijuana, that alone does not prove that the two bags are the same bag or that a bag full of legal items was not emptied later to be filled with marijuana.
If the footage is unclear, blurry, or lacks audio, a lawyer might highlight how unreliable it is. It’s also often possible to point out gaps in the timeline, like missing moments in the footage, and raise doubt about what might’ve happened during that gap that could easily explain a person’s actions as perfectly legitimate.
Challenging the Acquisition
A lawyer will also take a look at how the security footage was obtained. Everything must be done legally. If the police placed cameras on private property, for example, if they had no warrant, then this would violate constitutional rights. Court will frequently exclude evidence if it was obtained illegally, and this could prevent the prosecution from using surveillance evidence at all.
Using It to Advantage
Another tactic is to flip the script on the prosecution and use the footage to a defendant’s advantage. For example, if the police have footage showing a defendant at a community event during a time where it is alleged that trafficking took place, a skilled lawyer may be able to show how this and other footage shows that the defendant was frequently at these events as part of normal behavior, and yet never shows the defendant handling large quantities of anything or meeting with just a few people. Rather than discredit the defendant, the footage can actually be used to support their innocence.
Using Footage in Negotiations
If the video evidence is weak or at least partially inadmissible, a lawyer can use this to a defendant’s advantage. If they can point out to the prosecution that it will be difficult to get a conviction, and that some of the evidence may even be excluded, then the prosecution may be more willing to plea bargain or lower the charges significantly.
Legal Admissibility of Surveillance Footage
For surveillance footage to be used in a criminal case, it must be both obtained lawfully and also relevant to the case at hand. Prosecutors must also be able to prove that the footage is authentic and that it has not been tampered with or edited.
The first step is showing that it was lawfully obtained. The law says that we do not have an expectation of privacy in public areas, so cameras that cover streets, legitimate businesses during operational hours, and parks are all legal and can be used pretty much at any time in a case. But private spaces are different. In private spaces, neither the police nor a private individual can put up cameras without a warrant from the court.
The footage must also be relevant to the case. The prosecution cannot just grab random footage from anywhere at any time and try to use it. They must be able to defend the idea that it contributes something meaningful to the case they’re trying to make and does not unduly violate the defendant’s right to privacy. Finally, the footage has to be authentic, and this might require the prosecution to have the footage carefully analyzed (and a defense lawyer may insist upon this) or bring in a technician to testify about how the video was recorded and stored. The defense can analyze time stamps and metadata, which show things like the date and location, to confirm that the footage is reliable.
Talk to an Oklahoma City Criminal Defense Lawyer
Many people assume that surveillance footage is a slam dunk in a criminal case, but this simply is not true. A qualified lawyer knows how to properly investigate footage, how to introduce doubt about what it’s really showing, and sometimes how to use it for a defendant instead of against them. Call us at Cannon & Associates Law in Oklahoma City right away if you or a loved one have been charged with trafficking.