Phoenix Drug Trafficking Lawyer

Defending Drug Crimes in Arizona

Drug trafficking cases in Arizona often involve stops on interstate freeways such as I-10 and I-40. On some occasions, a wiretap investigation, which is often part of a more sophisticated drug conspiracy investigation, is utilized by police to detect, investigate, and prosecute more sophisticated and complex drug trafficking organizations. Additionally, law enforcement, particularly federal agencies, routinely intercept parcels sent via U.S. Mail, FedEx, or UPS that contain drugs and/or money. You'll need to contact a Phoenix Drug Trafficking lawyer if you've experienced this.

Arizona has a number of interstate freeways, which have been historically used for the transportation of large quantities of drugs. Police are well aware of this issue and routinely make traffic stops that lead to seizures of large quantities of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines, fentanyl, and cash in Phoenix and Maricopa County. In some cases, because of an ongoing investigation such as a wiretap, police already know that a car carrying drugs on money will be in a certain location. That vehicle is then stopped under the guise of a routine traffic stop to protect the ongoing investigation. This is sometimes known as a “wall off.”

Wiretap investigations into drug trafficking typically involve large amounts of drugs and conduct that spans a significant period of time. In order to conduct a wiretap and listen to someone’s phone calls, intercept text messages (including communications on WhatsApp, Signal, etc.) a judge must be persuaded that not only is the monitoring of communications likely to reveal evidence of a crime, but that other avenues such as informants, surveillance, and grand jury investigations have been unsuccessful. Before getting a judge to approve a wiretap, police must expend tremendous resources and pursue other options given the inherent invasion of privacy that comes from listening to someone’s phone calls. 

In Arizona, drug trafficking cases are most often prosecuted by the County Attorney’s Office, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, or the United States Attorney’s Office. Because marijuana has become decriminalized in many states, federal authorities rarely prosecute marijuana cases unless the distribution of marijuana is directly tied to an organizations distribution of other substances such as fentanyl or cocaine. Even if a marijuana seizure is the result of a federal wiretap, the case is most often handed off to state authorities for prosecution.