Home » Video » Reasonable doubt in domestic assault cases
Thank you for joining me today. I want to talk just a little bit today about defending a domestic assault case. Our firm, this is one of our focuses, domestic assault. We do a lot of cases. Many of our clients tell us they’re innocent. I can tell you that a certain percentage of people are charged with domestic assault and of course many are guilty. Our job is to get the best result possible. If the client is saying “I didn’t do it”, then we are required to defend them and try to win the case. If the evidence is pointing to their guilt, then they admit their guilt to us, then of course we try to get the best possible result we can. In many instances on a minor domestic assault where there is not injury so to speak, you could avoid a criminal record or that can be negotiated. In many cases where the client works towards a ‘he said, she said’, maybe it’s a male victim for example, he said, she said or a female victim whichever the one is. Many of those cases are winnable, if there is no injuries or no confirming or collaborating evidence and the client says he didn’t do it or she didn’t do it, we can often win those cases because you are pitting a credibility contest versus the complainant against your client’s word. If the client is properly prepared to testify, it’s often, you know, we can often create a reasonable doubt and win the case. The judge is left in a quandary. Well, this witness sounds reasonably convincing and so is this one. What should I do? You know it’s not ‘who is more likely to tell the truth’. That’s the definition of reasonable doubt if you can’t make a decision and I refer you to other videos we’ve done on the WD Test. That’s to how to assess credibility and you should also take a look at my more detailed video where I say in some detail how to defend a domestic assault case. So that’s the video tip of the day. It’s very important to defend these cases and if not, if you don’t have a winning case you need to negotiate the best possible low charge, the best result possible and retain a good lawyer to do that with an experience to know how to negotiate with a crown.