If your roommate has drugs, you could face arrest

You don’t use any illegal drugs yourself. You’ve never even smoked marijuana. You barely drink, and that’s legal at your age.

However, you live with roommates who are far more interested in these activities than you are. You know that they generally have illegal drugs in the house at any given time. You don’t take stock or inventory of these things, and you rarely talk about it, but you know it’s there.

So what if the police get called to the house, perhaps because someone suspects your roommates are selling drugs? Or what if they just show up for some other reason, like a noise complaint, and find the drugs? Could you be arrested?

You can be arrested even when you’re innocent

You certainly could get arrested, and the police may not listen to you at the scene when you tell them that you had nothing to do with the drugs that they found in the house. This is especially true if the drugs were in the living room or some other common area, rather than any specific roommate’s actual bedroom.

This does not mean you’re going to be convicted, however. The police may arrest everyone in the house and leave the court to sort out the mess. That’s where you can tell your side of the story and work to show that you were innocent. It’s crucial to know about all the legal defense options you have as you state your case and try to prove that you had nothing to do with the illegal activity that was taking place in the house where you lived.