Tulsa Criminal Defense Attorney | Cocaine Possession Lawyer | Cale Law Office
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Prosecutors charged the defendant with distributing cocaine. The defendant was 16 old at the time. The judge denied his motion to be certified and tried as a child. So, the defendant appealed. Here’s a summary the case.
The prosecution offered evidence a preliminary hearing that a crime was committed and that the defendant was the person that committed the crime. It also supplied testimony of an undercover officer who made a purchase. The judge also amended evidence from police reports. He also said that he and two other officers were playing closed in in an unmarked car. Additionally, band backup surveillance those in contact with the officers who are doing the drug buy. There was no video recording of the transaction.
The officer testified that he approached the youth standing outside an apartment complex for police to drugs were often traded. Yes the youth to sell him a $25 rock of crack cocaine. The boy did so. After the buy, the officer returned his car radiated inscription to the arresting officers. He said the boy was a black male about five feet tall, 1618 years old, and about 130 pounds. There is no written record of the description given to the arresting officers the record shows that the defendant was wearing blue shoes when officers put committed to jail, not black tennis shoes as the officer had described.
Police wrote down the serial numbers in the money used to by the crack. However, when police arrested the defendant, he did not have the money. The two other officers in the car with the officer made the arrest can identify the seller because they were too far away. The arresting officers took a picture of the defendant at the time of the arrest and showed that picture to the officer who made the purchase. The officer who made the pie was out of sight some distance away. On the basis of the single photo, the officer confirmed identity and the defendant is the person who sold him the crack.
The judge bound over the defendant for trial at preliminary hearing. The defendant’s motion to dismiss the charges and be certified as a child were considered by the judge. The defense prove comprised of his mother’s testimony the testimony of an employee in the Department of human services. Additionally, the judge amended a copy of the reverse certification study and psychological evaluation. The defendant did not have a prior convictions are charges on his record. Police and arrested him sometime earlier when the car that he was riding in was stopped.
Police arrested him at that time for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute an unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. However, prosecutors to not file charges. The defendant was not the driver of the car. Is never been under supervision of the court or the Department of human services even though he dropped out of school after repeated truancy. His mother testified that he was not a problem at home. However, she did not know the name of the school they had been attending. In the living with a relative to to his mother’s incarceration for several years during his youth. After the April incident, the defendant was supposed to have counseling best mother testified that every time she called about it she was put off.
Tulsa criminal defense attorney Stephen Cale has handled many of these reverse certification cases. It starts out first where prosecutors charge to as an adult for certain crime. The goal is to get the judge to have the defendant charged as a child. There are many advantages to this. If the defendant is charged with a child, he is more likely to get counseling and not have to go to prison.
Psychological evaluation show that they defendant had an IQ of 72. A psychologist defendant was suffering from some depression of the time the test because of adversely affected his score. The doctor also reported that the defendant admitted to experimenting with alcohol and marijuana on average 1 to 2 times a week. The doctor did not indicate that there was dependency on the substances. Defendant denied that he was drug dependent. The doctor testified that jail time could be helpful. The judge was concerned that DHS will be held provide the kind of treatment that the stated. He wanted evidence that the defendant would be placed in the kind of setting that the psychologist is a crime.
A DHS worker testified by DHS policies. The witness said that because of the seriousness of the fence charge he would have a high point count. This indicated it there was a good chance they be placed in a facility that the psychologist recommended. However, the judge denied certification as a child. He said that he would not return the defendant out to the general public. Is also concerned that DHS would not put him in a secured setting.
On appeal, the defendant argued that the statute was unconstitutional. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals found that the legislature intended that all drug offenses of a general description be included. Statute does not specify that only offenses under the original controlled dangerous substance act will be included in the inscription. Secondly, the defendant claimed that the trial court abused its discretion in refusing to certify them as a child for the purposes of the charge. The evidence showed that this was the first offense. There’s weaknesses in the case against the defendant and the court ordered doctors evaluation support a more favorable treatment in a juvenile system setting. The burden of proof falls on the youth to as proof that he should be treated in the adult system, said Tulsa criminal defense attorney Stephen Cale.