Assault Family Violence
Feb 19, 2018OUTCOME: Not guilty
Client was accused of assaulting his girlfriend by choking her and hitting on the sidewalk in a public setting. The case started as a felony, but the prosecutor dismissed the felony and refiled as a m ... isdemeanor (dropping choking allegation) on the eve of trial. At trial, apart from the complaining witness, two eyewitnesses testified that they saw him hit her, and the police testified to the injuries she sustained, along with pictures. On cross-examination, we showed that the two eye-witnesses only saw the tail-end of the confrontation, that one of them claimed to have been looking away and to have not actually seen my client strike his girlfriend, and that the other's testimony was inconsistent with what girlfriend stated herself and inconsistent with the physical evidence. We also showed that the police never mentioned in their report or testimony how intoxicated the girlfriend was, even though one of the officers tells the other on video "she's drunk." We even showed how the police failed to ever mention that girlfriend's first words to the police was that she slapped my client because he said something rude. We were able to show that, had the police made any effort at all to contact my client that night, they would have seen his injuries. We tore them to shreds, and the jury took about 45 minutes to find my client not guilty due to self-defense.
