When to Consider Agreeing to a Lab Certificate in Drug Cases

When fighting drug cases, the issue of lab certificates often comes up, specifically whether your defense attorney should agree to stipulate to those certificates. While all circumstances are different, your military court-martial defense lawyer should at least consider agreeing to a lab certificate in urinalysis cases if:

• The government agrees to produce additional overseas or non-local defense witnesses that the defense would otherwise have no basis to compel (i.e. mom AND dad, additional character witnesses, etc.).
• The government agrees to stipulate to a favorable stipulation of fact or stipulation of the expected testimony.
• The government agrees to dismiss non-primary offenses.
• The government agrees to produce the analyst via telephone or video at the Article 32 investigation.
• The government agrees to appoint a defense expert in the same area of expertise and produces all the documents, data, and analysis relied upon an insufficient time for the defense’s expert to review it and render an opinion as to the need to challenge the government analyst.

One of the key pieces to any trial is leverage, especially in hot UA cases. It is critical that your military defense lawyer understands urinalysis cases, knows all of the weapons he has available to him and knows when to use those weapons of just leverage the prosecutors to your benefit.