Youth Found Not Guilty of Possessing a Knife

Case study summary

Our client was a teenage boy who was charged with carrying a knife in a public place. He accepted having the knife but had a reasonable excuse to carry it. We represented him at trial and he was found not guilty.

Case study

We were approached by a young man and his family. He was shocked after he had been charged with possessing a knife in a public place.

Our client explained that he had been out with his friends when they were attacked by a much older group of men. They attacked him with knives and machetes. Our client suffered a significant head wound and brain injuries which took months to heal.

During the attack, our client was knocked to the floor. He managed to grab a knife dropped by one of the attackers, and run away. He ran to the nearest building he could find and asked for help. Members of the public gave him first aid and called 999. When police arrived, they saw that our client still had the knife on him. Our client told the police that he had picked up the knife when he was in fear for his life, and he had just done what he could to defend himself. He did not think he had done anything wrong. He was shocked when he was later charged with the offence.

Our specialist criminal defence lawyers persuasively put forward our arguments to the jury at trial and our client was found not guilty.

He was very relieved to have been found not guilty as a conviction for a knife-related offence at a young age could have affected his education and career for a long time.