Virtually every drug offense investigation involves a search and seizure.  Sometimes a person is searched when they are arrested, and sometimes the police have a search warrant.  But the end result is the seizure of some substance the police say is listed in the CDSA.   A good lawyer will study this part of the investigation very carefully to attempt to prove that the defendant's right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been violated.  If your lawyer can prove this then they may be able to get the evidence of the drug excluded from the trial.  Without that evidence the defendant will ordinarily be acquitted.  The lawyers at Tessmer law have won countless acquittals for their clients after they convinced the Court the evidence was obtained illegally by the police and ought to be excluded.   The police need reasonable and probable grounds to believe you've committed an offense, before they arrest and search you, and they generally need a warrant in order to search your house, an office or your property.  It is very important to examine the information placed before a judge in order to determine if there were reasonable grounds to believe evidence of a crime would be found and whether the police were truthful in setting out the grounds to obtain the warrant. 

While many police are honest hard working individuals, some officers lose sight of their duty to tell the truth and to obey the Constitution of Canada.  They make the mistake of thinking 'the ends justify the means', and so they take short cuts to get the evidence.   In one case handled by Tessmer law the officers testified in court that they were at the house looking for a lost child when they discovered the smell of marihuana, which enabled them to get a search warrant.  Our investigation led us to a neighbour, who also happened to be a young RCMP officer unaware of the deception, who told us that the same officers had earlier come to his house, and that all they were concerned about was the alleged grow op.  THERE WAS NO LOST CHILD!!!    In another case the officers testified that they went into our client's apartment with his consent.  We interviewed the apartment manager who told us he followed them up to the apartment and he heard our drunken client yell at the police, "YOU CAN'T COME IN WITHOUT A WARRANT!'  These are just two examples where good detective work by Tessmer lawyers  uncovered the deception and  led to our client's acquittals. 

In addition, sometimes the police try to punish the offender before the Court case is ever heard.  In one case, Stan Tessmer discovered that the police were smashing the grow operation equipment used in the grow instead of seizing it as the law permitted.  The defendant was acquitted in a landmark case as a result of the police action and the local headlines read 'POLICE HAD WARRANT TO SEARCH AND SEIZE, NOT SMASH AND SLASH'.    Other lawyers have since followed this case arguing the same violation, however it was Stan Tessmer that got that ball rolling where nobody else had sought to look.

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