Client Charged with Stalking Receives Community Order

Case study summary

Our client was charged with stalking with fear of violence. We persuaded the Court to sentence him on the basis of the lesser offence of stalking without fear of violence which significantly reduced his chances of receiving a prison sentence. A community order was imposed.

Case study

Our client was a 39-year-old operations manager. In 2023, he was accused of stalking involving fear of violence by his former partner and he instructed us to represent him.

The prosecution case was that our client had allegedly attended his former partner's address, sent unwanted flowers and attached a tracking device onto her car following the breakdown of their relationship. Due to the tracking device, he was able to obtain the address of her new partner as a result and visited him. Our client then attended his former partner's daughter's school to confront her and, in the process, he shouted and banged on her car window.

Our client accepted that he had attached a tracking device to his former partner's car. He explained that his relationship with her had always been 'on and off' and at the time of the offending, she had asked him for space. She told him that she was not seeing anyone else and that she still loved our client. Our client thought that they would soon fix their relationship after they had taken some time a part, as they had done on every other occasion. However, he soon became suspicious that his former partner was not being truthful and she was in fact seeing another man. In order to uncover the truth and get closure, he decided to track his former partner's whereabouts where it became apparent that his suspicions were true. Our client accepted that his actions amounted to stalking but he denied putting the complainant in fear of violence.

We began our preparations to achieve the best possible outcome for our client which included obtaining character references to support our client's previous good character. Despite having no previous convictions, he understood that, due to the nature of the offending, a prison sentence was a possibility due to having been charged with the more serious offence of stalking with fear of violence. We reviewed the case and thought that it would have actually been appropriate to charge our client with the lesser offence of stalking without fear of violence.

We instructed one of the directors of our firm, Liam Kotrie, to represent our client at his sentence hearing. He argued that our client should be sentenced on the basis of the lesser offence of stalking without fear of violence and the Court agreed. Our client received a community order which he was extremely pleased with.