PARTIAL CLIENT VICTORY! Instead of just posting the major wins, I feel it is also important to post the disappointments that come with the job of a defense attorney. Having been involved in the criminal justice system in various ways over the last 26 years (police, bail bonds, private investigator, attorney), I can appreciate what the different sides go through. While I still have many police officer friends, there are a few who, understandably, do not appreciate my work as a criminal defense attorney – especially when part of my job consists of critiquing or criticizing theirs. Yesterday I fought hard for a client who was charged with 2 crimes at his jury trial. As every client of mine knows, I will never push them to take a plea and if they want their day in court, I will not back down to a trial. My client was charged with domestic violence and a more serious charge of, in layman’s terms, preventing the alleged victim from calling 911 (It is actually more serious to stop someone from calling for help than to actually beat them up.) While violence of any kind is wrong, my client denied the accusations and so we went to trial. The allegations in this case were simple – that my client pushed the alleged victim, causing her to fall into a glass window behind the bathtub and then prevented her from calling for help (though he immediately bandaged her up and rushed her to the emergency room when he saw her bleeding). Although I fought hard and worked to be as fair as possible, I was prevented, over my many stern objections, from allowing the jury to hear the allegations that the accuser was actually being investigated for possibly embezzling well over $125,000 from my client’s company just before filing for divorce. While her possible criminal activity would not necessarily mean that my client was innocent, it would have allowed the jury to be a better judge of the alleged victim’s credibility and her possible motivations for fabricating the story (it was never denied that she fell but how she fell was in question). While many times the prosecuting attorney will remind the jury that real court is not like television shows such as CSI and Law and Order, this time she didn’t. I however didn’t miss the opportunity to let them know that it was not. You see, one of the first lines in Law and Order is that the “police investigate the crime”, right? In this case, it was clear, as several officers testified, that no investigation was done. As many as ten police officers were in some way involved in the call and not one ever went to the actual scene (about ten blocks away from where it was reported). Not one officer took photos of the alleged crime scene with the alleged broken glass. Not one used old fashioned police work with a camera and a tape measure to verify if the alleged victim’s story could even be possible (even though the multiple reports written by different officers showed somewhat conflicting accounts). In the end, although the police knew that my client immediately denied the allegations and told them that she may be setting him up to get the upper-hand in the divorce and custody case, not one of the many officers looked into the case at all. Not one went to the neighboring houses seeking possible witnesses – even though the alleged victim claimed she had been out drinking with friends and was unable to get into her own front door and there could have been neighbors who witnessed the commotion as she banged on the door for her husband to wake up and let her in. Not one officer spoke to any one of the five girlfriends the alleged victim said she was out drinking with to see how intoxicated she may have been – which may have caused her to accidentally slip in her wet bathtub and fall into the glass. No photos, no measurements, no witnesses, just a she said – he said, with an ongoing ugly divorce. As a defense attorney, it is not my job to prove the innocence of my client. It is always the prosecutor’s job to prove guilt. With so little else to go on, and without being able to hear evidence of the alleged victim’s potential criminal activity and potential motive to lie, the jury came back with a guilty verdict on the lesser count of domestic violence. After fighting very hard to show that the prosecutor failed to meet her burden of proof on the more serious charge (even though she was allowed, against my strong objections, to tell the jury they could still find him guilty without the full proof) the jury found my client NOT GUILTY. (Now my legal disclaimer: This, of course, is my interpretation of the events and the prosecuting attorney and police officers involved deserve their respect for doing their jobs as well. This is not intended to discredit the prosecutor, the judge, the police, or anyone else involved. This is simply a criminal defense attorney’s point of view.)
Posted on: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 01:12:29 +0000