Don't Want to Go to Trial? Hire a Lawyer For a Police Submission
If you have been charged with committing an offence by NSW Police, the common belief is that a person has no choice but to either plead guilty or not-guilty to charges in court and if pleading not-guilty, to stand trial for the offence charged. Going to trial is an expensive and stressful process.
You are able to make arguments to NSW police and provide evidence to them that may lead to the withdrawal of charges in your case before it proceeds to trial.
It is the job of lawyers to prepare and provide this information to NSW Police, which can include arguments about parts of an alleged offence not being proved (such as a person not being in the area police claim them to have been when an alleged crime occurred), or arguments based on the meaning of legislation and other types of technical legal arguments.
The advantage of making representations to NSW Police is that this can be done in a less formal and stressful circumstances than when lawyers make arguments in the court room, and if successful they can lead to police either completely withdrawing some or all of the charges against you or downgrading the seriousness of remaining charges.
Recently, Hunter Shafiz Lawyers acted for a client and made representations to NSW police where the client had been charged with failure to provide details of a car accident to a police officer (s 177 of the Road Transport Act 2013 (NSW)). We provided representations to the police arguing that because of a critical failure of the police to ask questions of the client in the legally required way, the offence had not in fact occurred. On the basis of these submissions, NSW Police withdrew the charges against the client before the matter proceeded to trial.
If you are looking for professional, expert advice about how to manage your criminal charges, contact our office on (02) 9682 5433 or via email at info@huntershafiz.com.au.
We note that the above information is general only and does not constitute legal advice. It is important to speak to an expert if you are looking to obtain legal advice about a situation affecting you.
