Major Drug Offenses

Attorney Julian Allatt with Rehmeyer & Allatt has extensive experience representing people who have been charged with selling and manufacturing/cultivating controlled substances. These prosecutions range from relatively low-level offenses such as students selling marijuana to friends here in State College, Pennsylvania to complex, multi-state corrupt organization prosecutions for large-scale drug distribution operations prosecuted by the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General. If you have been charged with selling controlled substances in Pennsylvania, it is extremely important to consult with an experienced criminal defense attorney who can help you understand your options.

Possession with the Intent to Distribute a controlled substance or the actual delivery of a controlled substance, often generally referred to as “PWID” is criminalized under the Pennsylvania Controlled Substances, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act and is a serious crime in Pennsylvania. No matter what type of drug or the amounts involved, PWID constitutes an ungraded felony offense. The penalties for these offenses are based on the type of drug involved, the amount of the drug or drugs involved, and the number of previous PWID offenses on an individual’s record.

Understanding sentencing exposure as it pertains to a charge of PWID involves a complicated interaction of the Pennsylvania Sentencing Guidelines, the Pennsylvania Controlled Substances, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act, and the Pennsylvania Sentencing Guidelines. Fortunately for individuals charged with drug distribution in Pennsylvania, there are no longer mandatory sentencing provisions for drug distribution under Pennsylvania law. The mandatory sentencing provisions that were once associated with particular substances and particular weights were found to be unconstitutional following the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2013 decision in Alleyne v. United States.

Although mandatory sentences are no longer a concern, a PWID charge can carry significant sentence exposure. To understand your sentencing exposure on a charge of Possession with the Intent to Distribute, you must know the following:

The drug, or the active prohibited chemical ingredient in the drug involved
The weight of the drugs intended for distribution
The “Offense Gravity Score” associated with the amount of the particular drug involved
The defendant’s “Prior Record Score”
Whether the immediate offense is a first, second, or subsequent offense
Whether any sentencing enhancements apply (school zone, delivery by non-drug dependent person to a person under the age of 18, etc.)

Pennsylvania law treats every commonly seen street drug differently. If the drug in our hypothetical example above had been cocaine instead of heroin, the maximum available sentence would have been 20 years instead of thirty. Had it been marijuana, the maximum would have been 10 years and the standard-range minimum sentence available to the court would have included merely probation.

Only an experienced criminal defense attorney can advise you on your particular sentencing exposure and any available factual or legal defenses. At Rehmeyer & Allatt, we have extensive experience representing individuals charged with Possession with the Intent to Distribute controlled substances. Attorney Allatt has successfully gotten drugs “thrown out of court” for illegal searches and seizures and has negotiated countless plea agreements which have allowed clients to avoid jail time or drastically reduce their sentences.