![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Feb. 8th, 2007 06:08 pm
Court shenanigans
After quite a wait we finally had the court case for the assault last summer today. All went pretty well all in all. The toe-rag has been convicted of assault, so that's good news. When he turned up at court he was already wearing a tag, so obviously he's been caught doing something else naughty recently. I'm actually surprised a charge of perjury or perverting the course of justice wasn't entered at some point, as the tales his barrister was telling were utter drivel, but at least it's done with now. He won't be sentenced until March as his current tag situation has to be considered too.
I got a call from the court a few minutes ago to tell me the news. The witness services guy told me the defense barrister had spoken to him once everything was over and wanted to congratulate me on how I'd handled it. Apparently, once he'd had me in the witness box he knew he wasn't likely to win. For my part all I really did was shoot him down every time he tried to insinuate anything I knew to be false. He also apologised to the ladies for any distress his questioning might have caused, which was, I think, extremely decent of him.
The main reason for this post is to point out how absurd some of the arguments were, because frankly I think it's hilarious.
Obviously the point of a defense barrister is to try to trip up the prosecution, and somehow prove that their evidence is false or inadmissible, however, the way this guy went about it was a bit dumb, to say the least. The first point he picked on was who was present at the time. The toe-rag's claim was that we were all outside at the time, including Sue, cracking jokes at his expense (who exactly he was kidding I don't know, I couldn't care less about the little shit). Now the thing is, Sue was about 15 miles away at the time, with James in Manchester. If you're going to lie, at least make it slightly believeable... The other one, and this is a real cracker, was to dispute how many times he hit me. Now, it might possibly be understandable if he'd said he *hadn't* hit me, or that he'd hit me less times than I said, but the idiot claimed he'd hit me twice. Actually it was only once. As you can understand, I was a bit baffled. The barrister asked me how many times I'd been hit and I said once, exactly one time. He then said something stupid like "I put it to you that the defendant actually hit you twice!". I'm afraid it's probably not good form in court, but I have to admit I laughed at that, and told him I couldn't be held responsible for the defendant's testimony, but that if he really wanted to make life worse for himself that was his own lookout. *My* barrister pissed himself at that, but smothered it quickly. I just can't believe anyone with any sense could actually think that a good argument against an assault charge was to make said assault sound even worse!
I have to say I pitied the defense guy really. Having such a load of twaddle to work with, the poor guy was only doing his best, but eventually, and fortuitously, it wasn't enough.
He'll be sentenced in March, so we'll see what happens then.
I got a call from the court a few minutes ago to tell me the news. The witness services guy told me the defense barrister had spoken to him once everything was over and wanted to congratulate me on how I'd handled it. Apparently, once he'd had me in the witness box he knew he wasn't likely to win. For my part all I really did was shoot him down every time he tried to insinuate anything I knew to be false. He also apologised to the ladies for any distress his questioning might have caused, which was, I think, extremely decent of him.
The main reason for this post is to point out how absurd some of the arguments were, because frankly I think it's hilarious.
Obviously the point of a defense barrister is to try to trip up the prosecution, and somehow prove that their evidence is false or inadmissible, however, the way this guy went about it was a bit dumb, to say the least. The first point he picked on was who was present at the time. The toe-rag's claim was that we were all outside at the time, including Sue, cracking jokes at his expense (who exactly he was kidding I don't know, I couldn't care less about the little shit). Now the thing is, Sue was about 15 miles away at the time, with James in Manchester. If you're going to lie, at least make it slightly believeable... The other one, and this is a real cracker, was to dispute how many times he hit me. Now, it might possibly be understandable if he'd said he *hadn't* hit me, or that he'd hit me less times than I said, but the idiot claimed he'd hit me twice. Actually it was only once. As you can understand, I was a bit baffled. The barrister asked me how many times I'd been hit and I said once, exactly one time. He then said something stupid like "I put it to you that the defendant actually hit you twice!". I'm afraid it's probably not good form in court, but I have to admit I laughed at that, and told him I couldn't be held responsible for the defendant's testimony, but that if he really wanted to make life worse for himself that was his own lookout. *My* barrister pissed himself at that, but smothered it quickly. I just can't believe anyone with any sense could actually think that a good argument against an assault charge was to make said assault sound even worse!
I have to say I pitied the defense guy really. Having such a load of twaddle to work with, the poor guy was only doing his best, but eventually, and fortuitously, it wasn't enough.
He'll be sentenced in March, so we'll see what happens then.