Interviewer: Some people just don’t realize how serious selling drugs is and what the penalties can be. Sometimes unfortunately people are used to transport drugs and they don’t realize, but just not touching the drugs or not actually even sometimes seeing the drugs. But knowing full well that they’re taking a package to from A to B, that that alone, can catch them in a web of possessing the drugs for a small amount of money.
Drug Dealers Often Use Addicts or People in Financial Constraints for the Purposes of Trafficking
People that are selling drugs are often using people who either are addicts, or who are people who are hard on the rocks and need some help financially. They offer them money, financial compensation to help move drugs, from one location to another. Sometimes people don’t realize that that action that they take, even though they are not going to be making a lot of money, and even though they are not going to be touching the drugs. That could cause them really serious consequences with the criminal justice system.
Mitigating Factors for a Drug Related Offense in the State of New York
Interviewer: What are something’s that would help a client’s case.
Lisa Pelosi: The thing that would help a client’s case is for them to, if they have a drug problems, immediately get help and immediately try to get into a program. For example, I recently did a case with a young man whose father was killed when he was very young. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time during a robbery, and he was killed. So the young man grew up in a single parent household, his mother raised him. She did her best and did everything she could for him. She had a very good job.
The Young Man was Distraught Over the Unresolved Death of his Father and Became an Addict
But when he wasn’t with her, as he grew up, he started to do sales of drugs to support a drug habit that she wasn’t aware that he had. When I got the case he was arrested for selling on a low level and we did the investigation. We realized that the core of the problem was pain he was feeling over the very early death of his father due to the gunshot wound that killed his dad. That was really never addressed in his life and so he started to use drugs and I brought him to the prosecutor’s office and I dealt with the head of the bureau.
Drug Counseling and Rehabilitation Programs May be Employed to Help Addicts
He interviewed the client for a couple of hours and thanks to the work on, with my law office, and the DA’s office, the young man and his mother. The young man is now in a drug program, and he is in patient and he will be there for a year. The case is finished so as long as he completes the drug program successfully. We’ll get the whole case dismissed. So, I think one of the big things is to, what I try to do anyways, is to get help with the people who need help. Sometimes, the young people are selling drugs, but when you look at their background and what their life story is, you could have an understanding as to why they took to the streets to sell drugs.
It is Possible for a Defense Attorney to Humanize the Plight of their Client to the Prosecutor
My office is very much involved is seeing why people are doing what they are doing. A lot of the times, you can humanize the client and humanize their plight to the prosecutor. The prosecutor’s office will listen to people who have had difficult situations in their background, and try to help them as well. It’s to their benefit as well, the DA’s office as well. Society in general to try to get people help more than send them to jail. Because sending them to jail is only one tool, and it’s not something that’s going to help the young kid who has certain problems. The DA’s office is open to getting to know the defendants in certain cases and maybe try to help them, rather than just throwing them in jail. So, we work really close with our clients to try to have an outcome that’s productive, and I’ve found that the prosecutor’s office will a lot of times go along with helping the people who are arrested, who just really shouldn’t be in jail.
