Client Avoids Prison after Possessing a Knife

Case study summary

Our client was a young man who had suffered a mental breakdown. He started to become paranoid and carried a knife due to perceived threats. This lead to him being arrested and charged. We persuaded a court not to send him to prison.

Case study

We were approached by a hardworking young man and his family. Our client had no previous convictions and his family were shocked after he had been arrested for a criminal offence.

Our client explained that he had suffered a breakdown and this had lead to him becoming paranoid and starting to carry a knife, something which was wholly out of character for him to do. He had his breakdown after struggling with pressures at work. He also had a difficult childhood, fleeing war in two countries before coming to the UK as a refugee.

Our specialist criminal defence lawyers fully explored our client’s difficult background and strong personal mitigation. We also obtained character references which were sent to the court beforehand. This meant that when the judge was reading the case papers he was able to understand who are client’s family and friends knew our client to be.

In court, our specialist advocate explained the client’s mental health difficulties whilst also making the court aware that he was in a better place currently. This alleviated the court’s fear that our client may re-offend.

The other challenge in our case is that knife crime is an ongoing serious issue in Manchester and judges may want to pass deterrent sentences. However, our carefully prepared mitigation showed that our client’s situation was different and a deterrent prison sentence would not be right.

The judge accepted are arguments and gave the client a suspended sentence. This meant that our client will not go to prison as long as he keeps to the terms of his order and does not commit any further offences.

Our client and his family were very happy with the result and relieved that he was not given an immediate prison sentence.