Forgery case Discontinued by Prosecution

Case study summary

Our client was a highly vulnerable man who was the victim of organised criminals and suffered with severe mental health issues.

We wrote to the prosecution and persuaded them to end their case before he was sentenced.

Case study

We represented this client from the beginning of his case, when he was first arrested and interviewed after making repeated attempts to claim drugs from a pharmacy using a false prescription.

He was later charged with forgery and attended the local magistrates' court. Here he was advised by our expert lawyer and chose to plead guilty to this offence. He explained that he had been coerced into doing this by a local drug dealer. He had also been kidnapped and tortured in the weeks before committing the offence, which had left him with PTSD.

Our client also provided us details of his mental health. With his permission, we recovered his medical records and were able to establish that he had been diagnosed with a number of serious mental health conditions.

Following this, we carefully selected and instructed an expert psychiatrist to speak with our client and provide a report relating to his mental health. This report was served to the court and to the prosecution to demonstrate our client's diminished responsibility.

Weeks before the date of the trial, social workers who were responsible for our client contacted us to express concerns that he had, once again, been the victim of a crime and was being taken advantage of by criminals.

We immediately wrote to the prosecution to highlight this and argue that a further sentencing would not benefit the community our client and that the case should be ended.

The prosecution were left with no choice, having seen our client's psychiatric report, the details from the social services and our representations, they chose to end their case.