Claris Law Legal Blogging Community

Editor: Tampa Criminal Attorneys
Profession: Tampa Defense Attorneys

Category: Recent Wins

State v. P; Judge: Nick Nazaretian

The client (defendant) was arrested for domestic battery after he got into an altercation with his girlfriend. It started out as an argument over a $1,700.00 cell phone bill. At one point his girlfriend grabbed a knife and ran into the client's bedroom. HIs bedroom contained a safe that held 32 firearms. At some point during the argument the girlfriend believed our client might try to grab a gun out of the safe. She took a bottle of nail-polish remover and threw it in his eyes. The police report indicates that the defendant then pushed the victim to the ground. Tampa Police were called and our client was arrested for domestic battery. A short time later the girlfriend filed a Petition for a Domestic Violence Injunction with the Domestic Relations Court in Tampa. Even when a victim decides to recant her story and drop charges a Tampa Criminal Attorney is going to face obstacles before he/she will be able to bring about a dismissal of the battery charge. In short, a cooperative victim does not mean that your case will be dismissed. The state will go forward on a case whether the victim wants to or not if they feel that they can prove the defendant's guilt. In order to bring about a dismissal of a charge in this situation the prosecutor must be convinced that pursuing the charge is pointless because the case would be very difficult to win. Here, we contacted the prosecutor and made him aware of the circumstances that supported our client's self-defense argument, and we also filed our own waiver of prosecution (not the form waiver handed out by victim's assistance) with the Court. The State eventually dropped the charge. The Domestic Violence Injunction was dismissed by the Domestic Relations Court after a hearing revealed that our client did not intentionally strike the victim.