Trends in Howard County Drug Cases
The following is taken from an interview with a Howard County drug lawyer as they discuss developing trends and how they are treated in Maryland. If you have been accused of a drug crime call today and schedule a free consultation with an attorney.
How Do The Judges In Howard County Treat Drug Cases?
Judges in Howard County tend to be very reasonable. We don’t have any truly bad judges here. Our judges will sentence commensurate with state standards. They won’t incarcerate significantly for a first offense, low volume cases. However, they will throw people in jail on second, third, and fourth offenses.
Howard County Criminal Cases
Individual personalities make a big difference in the outcome of any kind of case. The state’s attorney in Howard County will be different than the state’s attorney in Baltimore County, for example. Judges will be different in Howard County than they would be in Harford County, for example. So all of those individual personal differences will change the way a case plays out in Howard County.
Trends in Howard County Drug Cases
In the past few years there has been a pretty significant rise in prescription drug cases in Howard County. I have certainly seen a lot more than in the past several years than I did in the years preceding.
Additionally, marijuana decriminalization has had a pretty significant effect on how Howard County deals with drug offenses. It frees the courts up from a lot of these small amount of marijuana cases. So where there was regularly half a dozen to a dozen cases on any criminal docket that were marijuana possession under 10g we don’t see those anymore. Now those individuals usually just pay a civil fine.
State-Wide Trends in Maryland Drug Cases
There is so much variation from county to county that it is hard to say whether there is a single trend across the entire state of Maryland in how they are dealing with the drug cases. Cases are dealt with differently in Harford County than they are in Howard County and again completely in a different way in Prince George’s County.
Common Myths about Drug Cases in Howard County
Frequently the most common misconception is that a case can’t be won. Lots of people will come in saying, “The cops found this in my car while I was driving.” That is the end of the story. People don’t realize that a violation of their constitutional rights can lead to dismissal of a criminal case. I think that is probably the biggest misconception.
The other misconception is that you are required to give the officer consent to perform a search. When the officer asks permission to perform a search it does not imply that you have to say yes.