Client charged with Knife offence found Not Guilty

Case study summary

Our client was a young professional who had been accused of threatening family members with a bladed article. We represented him at trial and he was found not guilty.

Case study

Our client was a recent University graduate working for a government organisation. His future, which he had spent years studying for, was put at risk after he was accused of threatening a family member with a knife. He was suspended from work after being charged whilst the case was resolved. He sought out our specialist criminal defence lawyers to represent him.

He was part of a large and close-knit family. However, tensions had recently run high in the build up to a family wedding. On one of the days leading up to the wedding, seven relatives, including our client, were at our client’s home address when an argument broke out. Things became very heated and then escalated when one family phoned the police making false allegations. This split the family, with half of the relatives supporting our client and the other half supporting the complainant.

We carefully reviewed all of the evidence and worked with our client to obtain his version of events and plan our approach for trial.

On the day of the trial, the relatives making the false allegations did not attend. The prosecution wanted to give them another chance to turn up. This would have been wholly unfair to our client as it could have taken several months to get another court date. There was no guarantee that the family members would even turn up, and our client was on unpaid suspension from his employment as a result of this case. Therefore, we strongly opposed the application to adjourn. We ultimately persuaded the court not to adjounrn the trial date and the prosecution were forced to offer no evidence, meaning that our client was found not guilty.

Our client was relieved that this was not dragged out any longer, and he is working on returning to work.