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What are my possible defenses?


One defense is an alibi. That is an explanation that at the time in question, you were not at the
crime scene and could not have committed a crime there. For instance, if you were out of town
on the date the crime happened, you can raise an alibi defense.
Depending on the nature of the crime, you might be able to offer the defense of
entrapment. This means that in order to obtain evidence of a crime, the police induced you to
commit (lured you into committing) a crime you had not been considering. This is a common
defense in offenses involving the sale of drugs to an undercover agent. Precisely because it is a
good defense, police work to counteract it by making sure that they file charges as a result of
more than one sale.
They also rarely charge someone with an illegal purchase from an undercover agent. As a
result of these precautions, the defense of entrapment does not often succeed in drug cases. As
long as the prosecutors can show that the defendant was either predisposed to commit the crime
or that the inducement (lure) was not outrageous, they probably will succeed over a defense of
entrapment.
If the prosecutor charges you with a violent crime, you may be able to argue that you did
it in self-defense.
There also are many other possible defenses. These include intoxication (you were too
drunk to be able to form the "specific intent" to commit a certain crime, such as first-degree
murder), mistake (you thought the purse you took was yours), insanity (you committed the crime
but are legally excused because you could not understand the wrongness of your act), defense of
others (you shot an assailant to stop him from killing your wife), defense of property, and many
more.