oof
I'm feeling like I should turn in my bar-card.
I tried a case Tuesday, which I thought was a no-brainer. It was a typical domestic violence case, the alleged victim was recanting and was in fact saying that my guy acted completely in self-defense. She had been into the office before, and was completely supportive. I honestly believed her when she said that she had started it, and also ended it by calling the cops.
The two were under a lot of stress, of all sorts. He wasn't getting shifts like he should, so they were behind on rent and bills. So there was economic stress. They had a child under the age of one, who had been staying with her mother and whom my guy hadn't seen in a couple of days. The best part was, the complaining witness was packing on the day this all happened. So they had plenty of relationship stress, as well. She is in her early twenties and hadn't graduated from high school. It is easy to imagine the stress she was under and the frustration and betrayal she must have felt.
I thought it was a fantastic sign -- I had four men on my jury (out of six here) and I knew that she was going to say that she had grabbed my guy's groin in the middle of the fight. Four men!
The best part was, the cop didn't even show. No pictures, no corroborating testimony -- nothing. All they had was the 911 tape, in which she says "he beat me up for no reason." They aren't married, so the tape was coming in.
The problem that we ran into was that she did say that he spanked her, and that's how she got the bruise on her leg. However, at the same time, she was biting him. The prosecutor made some hay, asking the jury whether that scenario was very believeable. In any event, in light of the larger context and her repeated averments that he was only defending himself and that she wasn't afraid of him, I didn't think that we'd have a problem.
But the jury was out 45 minutes, which worried me, and they ended up convicting on two counts. I was stunned. Apparently, what someone says to a police officer, at the time of the incident, is enough (without the police officer's testimony, for god's sake!) to convict a person in the county I live in.
Good god.
I tried a case Tuesday, which I thought was a no-brainer. It was a typical domestic violence case, the alleged victim was recanting and was in fact saying that my guy acted completely in self-defense. She had been into the office before, and was completely supportive. I honestly believed her when she said that she had started it, and also ended it by calling the cops.
The two were under a lot of stress, of all sorts. He wasn't getting shifts like he should, so they were behind on rent and bills. So there was economic stress. They had a child under the age of one, who had been staying with her mother and whom my guy hadn't seen in a couple of days. The best part was, the complaining witness was packing on the day this all happened. So they had plenty of relationship stress, as well. She is in her early twenties and hadn't graduated from high school. It is easy to imagine the stress she was under and the frustration and betrayal she must have felt.
I thought it was a fantastic sign -- I had four men on my jury (out of six here) and I knew that she was going to say that she had grabbed my guy's groin in the middle of the fight. Four men!
The best part was, the cop didn't even show. No pictures, no corroborating testimony -- nothing. All they had was the 911 tape, in which she says "he beat me up for no reason." They aren't married, so the tape was coming in.
The problem that we ran into was that she did say that he spanked her, and that's how she got the bruise on her leg. However, at the same time, she was biting him. The prosecutor made some hay, asking the jury whether that scenario was very believeable. In any event, in light of the larger context and her repeated averments that he was only defending himself and that she wasn't afraid of him, I didn't think that we'd have a problem.
But the jury was out 45 minutes, which worried me, and they ended up convicting on two counts. I was stunned. Apparently, what someone says to a police officer, at the time of the incident, is enough (without the police officer's testimony, for god's sake!) to convict a person in the county I live in.
Good god.
posted by swd at 9:25 PM
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