FAQ 09: What if drugs were found in a car and the owner of the drugs refused to admit they were his?
If drugs are found in a vehicle that you are riding in and they are not on the person of any of the occupants, the police can charge anybody that had access to it.
Say, four passengers in a vehicle that has drugs in the center console, they could charge all four people. Now, if whosever drugs they were, whether they claim that those drugs are there’s or not, you can still be arrested for it, ultimately. Because even if the person who bought the drugs and put them in the center console says, “hey those were my drugs” you know, the police can still say “well all the other three people in the car knew about it and had access to it.”
How do we defend against something like that? We show that you were just the backseat passenger, you had just gotten in the car five minutes ago, you didn’t know the driver, you knew the other backseat passenger, you don’t use drugs, you know that your friend doesn’t use drugs and you had absolutely no idea that there we drugs in the center console. That’s one of the many ways that we can argue in favor of you, not knowing that there were drugs in there and getting those charges dismissed.