Regarding the lawyer would the legal aid brief they offer be acceptable or should I actually pay someone to represent me? The one I accepted last time because I didn't know whether I needed one (having never been arrested before) seemed fine. I don't know if I have her details still.
It depends on whether you're going guilty or not guilty. Here's what happened to us :-
When we were arrested the duty solicitor told me there was no point in going not guilty cos they had stacks of evidence against us (house raided) so he advised me to 'no comment' the whole interview, which was quite difficult when being bombarded with questions for over 2 hours! My OH declined the duty solicitor and gave a full interview which worked out well cos it meant we didn't contradict each other.
The solicitor had no idea about RCs regarding quantities etc so I spoke to these people
http://www.release.org.uk/ who put me in touch with a solicitor that specialised in drug offences. I had a 30 minute phone consultation with the solicitor who said that as we were going guilty there was no need to have a solicitor in court unless there were mitigating circumstances to be argued, which there weren't. He gave me a bit of advice and charged me £90 !!! as we weren't entitled to legal aid.
After 4 very worrying months on bail they charged us with possession of 3 class As and a class B which was a result as we'd had 64g of speed. We actually had 12 drugs in the house, they found 6 but 2 weren't illegal at the time. We went to court and pleaded guilty. It got adjourned 3 times for various reports and eventually we got 12 months probation with 6 months drug counselling. Both of which were a complete joke because they just couldn't get their heads around weekend recreational drug use. As far as they're concerned if you use drugs you MUST have a drug problem, as well as relationship, family, financial, employment, educational and every other problem they tried to throw at us and failed miserably.
The only thing we were worried about was getting in the local paper and somehow, despite 4 court appearances, we managed to avoid it. So apart from the financial loss due to seized drugs and days off work (about £1000) and the absolute pain of going to probation it all worked out ok in the end. I even managed to wangle a dexedrine prescription as a result of being nicked which kept us going for years so it was worth it just for that.
I wouldn't worry too much as you've been caught with a relatively small amount of personal use class Bs but it's worth speaking to Release to see what they say.
Good luck x
) situation could probably have been avoided. I mainly get them so I can sleep after finishing my supplies for the night.
