TDCAA    TDCAA Community  Hop To Forum Categories  Criminal    Using a pharmacist to identify controlled substance
Go
New
Find
Notify
Tools
Reply
  
Using a pharmacist to identify controlled substance Login/Join 
Member
posted
If you have a pharmacist expert witness giving their expert opinion on the nature of the substance of pills based on the identification numbers on those pills, is that enough to prove the nature of the controlled substance at a criminal trial?

I've found a case saying the pharmacist's expert testimony was enough to id the pills at a revocation hearing but have not located anything about having the pharmacist testimony be sufficient to prove the identity of pills at an actual criminal trial. (The closest I came was the cases saying that a police officer could identify marihuana based on their own expertise even if there was no chemical test.) I would think an experienced pharmacists testimony would be good enough, but has anyone dealt with this issue before?
 
Posts: 11 | Registered: August 19, 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
Ran into an issue last time I prepared to go to trial with pharmacist's testimony as my only means of proving up the alleged drug. We were presented with sufficient evidence of "fake" drugs that were available through the internet or other avenues. These pills were NOT the alleged substance, but were of the same size, shape, and color and even contained the same identifying markers. Our pharmacist would have testified that she could not say with certainty that one was real and one was fake. Our conclusion was a need for chemical testing to rule out the fakes.
 
Posts: 81 | Registered: December 13, 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
  Powered by Social Strata  
 

TDCAA    TDCAA Community  Hop To Forum Categories  Criminal    Using a pharmacist to identify controlled substance

© TDCAA, 2001. All Rights Reserved.