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-A motion to suppress evidence is a motion
filed with the court asking the court to exclude and throw out
evidence that was recovered by law enforcement.
And it's grounded in the Fourth Amendment, which is the right
to be free from an unreasonable search and seizure.
So there are constitutional legal provisions
that allow for the motion, and in Nevada there
are also provisions in the NRS sections
that allow one to file a motion to suppress
if law enforcement acted unlawfully.
-We file suppression motions where it's apparent
that the police acted improperly.
This tends to happen in three types of situations.
The first situation is where police act without a warrant
and without a valid warrant exception.
The second situation is where the police have a warrant,
but we find that it's improperly issued
so we're able to actually attack the warrant itself.
And third is when the police had a warrant,
but they exceed the scope of that warrant.
Any of these situations could be a basis
to have the evidence thrown out in court
in a successful suppression
-Here at Las Vegas Defense Group,
we often file motions to suppress evidence
in situations where we feel that our clients' rights were
violated.
These are important tools that help
us to get evidence dismissed and help us to win a lot of cases.
Sometimes when we successfully complete
the motion and evidence is excluded then
we win the case that way.
At a minimum, it may buy us leverage
in negotiating with the prosecutor
and convince them to reduce the charges,
and give our client a much better deal
than he or she would have otherwise had.
-It's really important in a case where there's physical evidence
to determine how it was that law enforcement came
into possession of that evidence.
Here at the Las Vegas Defense Group,
we're going to review the police reports.
We're going to get law enforcement's position
about what happened.
We're going to get your position about what happened.
And sometimes, there's a dramatic difference
between what law enforcement says
and what our clients tell us.
Often, there might be witnesses that
observed the events that led up to a search and seizure.
Once we gather all of the facts, we're
going to prepare a written motion, which details all
of the points that we feel support why the evidence should
be excluded and why we believe the case should be thrown out.
We're going to file that written motion with the court.
We're going to serve a copy of it on the prosecution.
And the plan is that when the prosecutor reads the motion,
they're going to realize that their case could
be in jeopardy.
Sometimes based on the filing of a motion alone,
we can negotiate a much more favorable resolution.
And sometimes if the prosecutor believes our motion has merit,
they may simply submit on the motion
and the case could be dismissed.
-If we win our motion, if we're successful in our motion
to suppress evidence then the consequences
that the evidence that the police illegally discovered
or obtained is excluded from court.
So suppose that we established that the police did an illegal
search of our client's car and found a bag of ***,
and our client is charged with possession for sale .
In that situation, the evidence of the ***
would be excluded from court, and almost always it
results in the case against our client been entirely dismissed.