In this video, Wallin & Klarich Associate Attorney, John-Patrick E. Mullen-Lujan discuss with Wallin & Klarich Senior Partner, Paul J. Wallin, what you will need to win your domestic violence case.
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Transcript:
And how can we help someone accuse a domestic violence, for example? What happens if a spouse gets into an argument with their husband and gets pissed off at them and says calls 9-1-1 and says, he hit me and he punched me or something like that. Whether it's true or not, what's going to happen next?
John-Patrick Mullen-Lujan: [00:21:53:15] Well, generally, if it's a domestic violence crime, the officers will always arrest one of the parties just because they want to mitigate the situation, make sure that even if it is at all true that the situation doesn't escalate any further. So they try and de-escalate it by arresting one of the individuals. Once you're arrested, then you're booked, and then once we get the call charges, you're likely going to be filed or they're already filed. And so what we're going to do is we're going to try and get all the discovery. We're going to review all the photos taken, any police reports, any video surveillance, anything like that to try and see what get down to the to the truth of the matter and see what the best thing we can do is. And then if it does happen to be true and it was just a situation that escalated and got out of hand and maybe you just grabbed your partner by the arm two to two roughly, then it's something we can we can deal with. We can put together a mitigation package, we can paint you ...in the best light possible to demonstrate that to the attorney, try and get the charges either changed or try and get the sentence reduced.
Paul J. Wallin: [00:23:24:08] So if in fact someone calls the police, let's say a spouse and says that he grabbed my arm and there's a mark, and let's assume he did grab the person's arm. But let's assume that the wife doesn't want her husband to go to jail because he'll lose his job and they need the money. And he says it'll never. It's never happened before. It won't happen again. And she says, I'm not going to testify if she doesn't want to testify. How can they convict the... Her husband anyway, or can they?
John-Patrick Mullen-Lujan: [00:23:57:21] Well, they can order her to be present and to testify. Now, if she decides not to, then that's a different situation where in that case, the spouse would be getting into their own legal issues with contempt and stuff like that. But generally, they wouldn't have much evidence. They'd have to t present all the evidence-based on the testimony of the officer who wasn't there at the time. So they know anything.
Paul J. Wallin: [00:24:31:19] Yes. So if a spouse refuses to testify in court. Number one, they can be held in contempt. But there is a law that says if you are the victim of domestic
violence, you cannot be put in jail for refusing to testify. The court can make you go to classes, but they can't put you in jail. So many times a victim of domestic violence A) The person may have made it up in the first place and feels guilty or B) They may not want to see their husband convicted for all the reasons we've said. So they refuse to testify. And sometimes when they refuse to testify, the punishment to the wife for not testifying is far less severe than the punishment that the husband will get. So that's why this situation comes up. The district attorney does everything possible. The police does everything possible to pressure the person that's the victim to testify, but often they do not want to testify and they not only they get made feel guilty, but it's ultimately up to them. Unfortunately for the person accused, if the wife called 9-1-1, there's going to be a tape of that and that tape is admissible in court. And so they can actually use that because it's considered an excited utterance. So it's an exception to the evidence code, and they can play that to the jury and a jury could convict someone based on that as well as physical evidence.