Alleged NYC Craigslist Adderall Seller Avoids Felony Conviction for PL 220.31 & Receives No Jail & No Probation

Selling adderall online on sites such as Craigslist is an extremely serious drug felony in New York. For that matter, selling adderall or other controlled substances to an undercover cop or any other buyer online or in person is criminally devastating. It is of no consequence whether or not you have a prescription for these “study aids” or not. At its core, an illegal drug sale is an illegal drug sale. If you are arrested in New York for selling “Pep Pills,” “Beans,” “Uppers” or any amphetamine or dextroamphetamine, you certainly will receive a boost in clarity coming from your jail cell, a prosecutor, the judge and even your criminal defense lawyer. What will be clear, however, is not  the upper you get from ingesting adderall, but the reality that you now face one to two and a half ( 1 to 2.5 ) years in prison followed by one year post release supervision as a individual without any criminal history at all. Broken down to the simplest level, an arrest, indictment and conviction for Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance in the Fifth Degree, New York Penal Law 220.31, is a crime that can, and often does, lead to a combination of incarceration, probation, and destruction of careers and livelihoods. How you implement your defense and the strength of that defense will decide if you are able to walk away unscathed, reduce the crime you are charged with or spend time “upstate.”

Recently, NYPD detectives arrested a Saland Law PC client for selling 45 pills of adderall to an undercover police officer after advertising “study aids” on Craigslist in Manhattan. The client faced an indictment for violating New York Penal Law 220.31, Fifth Degree Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance. A class “D” felony as described above, the client faced incarceration as well as a permanent and non-expungeable criminal record. Making matters significantly worse, our client had previously been convicted of misdemeanor drug related crimes after being charged with felonies.

After being released from custody with bail upon our client’s arraignment, we took the time to deeply review and analyze our client’s medical history, familial history, mental health history and prior criminal conduct. Not an easy task to convince prosecutors that someone with a prior drug record should be given a second or third opportunity to avoid a felony and incarceration, Saland Law PC put a package together for the Assistant District Attorney and agreed to a debriefing or “Queen for a Day.” This meeting with the prosecutor, a paralegal, our client and one of our criminal defense attorneys allowed our client to express and share the history and situation that ultimately led up to our client’s arrest. While this may not be the best approach in each and every drug arrest in New York City, for this particular set of circumstances where the People’s case and evidence would be a “slam dunk” at trial, the options were limited. Without any legal issues such as a bad search of our client or an arrest lacking probable cause, our client agreed with our judgment.

Ultimately, prosecutors offered our client a misdemeanor plea without any jail or probation. More specifically, our client pleaded to violating Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the Seventh Degree, New York Penal Law 220.03. This crime is commonly associated with personal use offenses with the drug weight being as little as residue. No plea reflecting the 45 pills of adderall or use of Craigslist to facilitate the sale (or any indication of sale at all) was required by law enforcement.

At bottom, each and every case is unique. The New York criminal lawyers at Saland Law PC have successfully represented numerous clients accused of selling adderall and other controlled substances. Ranging from treatment and dismissals non-jail dispositions and reductions from felonies to lower offenses, Saland Law PC has done its best to navigate the criminal justice system to achieve what we believe to be the best results in these cases.

To learn more about New York drug crimes, offenses related to adderall including New York Penal Law 220.31 and New York Penal Law 220.06, and to better understand the criminal process in the State of New York and New York City, review content from our blogs and websites that are linked in this entry and below.

The New York criminal lawyers at Saland Law PC served collectively as prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorneys Office and as Federal Assistant United States Attorneys prior to establishing the criminal defense practice servicing the metro New York City region.

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