Burbank Drug Crime Lawyer

Burbank Drug Crime Lawyer

The motel room on Victory Boulevard—you’re visiting someone, police knock announcing search warrant, they find methamphetamine in the nightstand drawer, and now you’re cuffed in the parking lot while Burbank narcotics officers photograph everything and ask “whose dope is this” like you’re supposed to answer. Your phone’s being seized as evidence, your car’s getting towed from the motel lot, and the booking officer at the Burbank Police station on Third Street keeps asking “how long have you been using” and “where did you get it” while typing everything into a system that will be read by prosecutors before you even understand what you’re being charged with. They book you first—fingerprints, mugshot, property inventory where they catalog the $127 cash in your wallet that the prosecutor will later call “drug proceeds.” You post bail or sit in custody for 48 hours waiting for arraignment. They hand you a court paper: Los Angeles County Superior Court, Burbank, 300 East Olive Avenue. Department B if they’re charging misdemeanor possession under Health & Safety Code Section 11350, Department A if they’re alleging felony possession for sale under Section 11351. The difference between those two charges—probation-eligible misdemeanor versus state-prison-presumptive felony—often comes down to how many baggies the police found and whether you had a scale in the car, and your case is already in the system, you can look it up right now at the LA County Case Access website, type your name, see the charges the Los Angeles County District Attorney is preparing while you’re sitting at home trying to figure out what lawyer to call, and what’s happening while you wait is the prosecutor reads the police report, looks at the lab results (California Department of Justice crime lab uses gas chromatography-mass spectrometry testing, takes 60-90 days for results, but they file charges before the lab confirms), calculates your criminal history to determine what plea offer to make, they’re working, the system is moving, you’re the only one sitting still—and by Tuesday morning at 8:30 AM when you walk into Department B or Department A, the prosecution will have done all their preparation and you will have done none, which is why the first call you make after they release you from booking should be to counsel who can start filing discovery motions before the prosecutor has time to build a narrative about what those drugs in the nightstand drawer mean and whether you knew they were there and whether you had the ability to control them.

For simple possession under Health & Safety Code Section 11350, they must prove: knowledge that the substance was present, knowledge that it was a controlled substance, a usable amount was present, and you had actual or constructive possession. That last element—constructive possession—is where many, many drug cases become defensible, because “the drugs were in the motel room” is not the same as “the drugs were mine.” If three people are in that motel room and methamphetamine is in the nightstand drawer, the prosecution has to prove you knew it was there and had the ability and intent to control it. If the room is rented in someone else’s name and the drugs are in a drawer you never opened, that’s a winnable case—but only if your attorney files the right motions and forces the prosecution to prove dominion and control, not just physical proximity. For possession for sale under Health & Safety Code Section 11351, they need all the possession elements plus intent to sell. How do they prove intent when you never actually sold anything? Quantity, packaging (individual baggies suggest sales), scales, cash, lack of paraphernalia, text messages asking to buy drugs, expert testimony from Burbank narcotics officers who will say “in my experience, this packaging indicates sales activity.” The prosecution doesn’t need to catch you selling, they just need circumstantial evidence that a jury could interpret as sales activity.

How much does a criminal attorney cost in California? For simple possession charges in Burbank—Health & Safety Code Section 11350—expect to pay $2,500 to $5,000 as a flat fee covering arraignment, pretrial conferences, motion practice, and trial if necessary. For possession for sale under Section 11351, fees run $7,500 to $15,000. For transportation or sales under Section 11352, $10,000 to $25,000. For manufacturing cases under Section 11379.6, fees start at $15,000 and can reach $50,000 or more. Federal drug cases run $25,000 to $100,000 or more depending on quantities involved.

The public defender is free if you qualify based on income, but the Los Angeles County Public Defender handles an average of 500 active cases per attorney. That’s not a criticism of the public defenders—they’re excellent lawyers trapped in an impossible system. They cannot give your case the attention it deserves when they’re juggling 500 other cases simultaneously. They cannot spend 10 hours reviewing the crime lab report looking for chain of custody issues or GC-MS testing irregularities. They cannot hire a private investigator to interview the other people who were in that motel room to build a defense based on lack of knowledge or constructive possession. They cannot file multiple suppression motions testing every aspect of the search warrant. The constitutional right to counsel doesn’t guarantee effective counsel—and there’s a vast difference between having an attorney in the room and having an attorney who can dedicate the time necessary to properly investigate and defend your case. The real cost calculation isn’t attorney fee versus saving money, it’s attorney fee versus criminal conviction. A drug conviction becomes the prior conviction that turns your next possession charge into a felony, the crime involving moral turpitude that triggers removal proceedings if you’re not a United States citizen, the conviction that prevents professional licensing in medicine, law, nursing, teaching, real estate, contracting. The cost of conviction is lifetime, and $5,000 spent on proper defense is cheaper than $100,000 lost in career opportunities over the next twenty years.

Most drug cases depend entirely on search and seizure—suppress the evidence and the case disappears. The Fourth Amendment doesn’t protect the guilty, it protects everyone from unlawful government intrusion. Common violations in Burbank drug cases: the traffic stop that escalates from “your registration is expired” to “I smell marijuana so I’m searching your entire vehicle,” the motel room search warrant based on a confidential informant whose reliability was never properly established, the consent search where the officer says you consented but the body camera footage shows you said “I guess” when asked if police could search—which is not voluntary consent under the case law, it’s acquiescence to authority. Your attorney files a suppression motion under Penal Code Section 1538.5, challenges the lawfulness of the search, forces the prosecution to prove that police had probable cause or reasonable suspicion or voluntary consent.

212-300-5196.