The following post was written by Luke McConnell, Partner, Mulligan Breit McConnell:
2018 was a significant year for jury trials. I tried three case in 2018. One case involved a serious traffic accident. The second was a first degree murder case. And the third a sexual assault case. In the sexual assault case my client was found not guilty of all charges by the jury and it was certainly the case of the year for me.
In the sexual assault trial, the only evidence against my client was the word of the accuser. When the accuser made her allegation, the police detective conducted an interview with her. In that interview, the accuser made many inconsistent statements and her story was very outlandish. The detective didn’t pick up on any of it and he didn’t challenge her story in any way. He believed what she said even though her story didn’t add up. The detective tried to trick my client into making admissions by setting up a secret recorded phone call. That didn’t work either. And that was all the work the detective did. The case was filed, and my client’s life put on the line, with no reliable evidence.
The case was troubling because there should have been a lot of follow up investigation based upon the story being told by the accuser. But the detective did nothing. Thankfully, through hard work by me and my team, we were able to show the jury how terrible the investigation was and how problematic the accusations really were. If convicted, my client could have been in prison for the rest of his life. The jury acquitted my client in less than three hours and he walked out of the courtroom a free man after a very difficult ordeal.
The police have so much power and can manipulate the process so easily. Even putting someone’s life on the line by not doing their job the right way. It is critical that you get an attorney involved as quickly as possible if you are facing serious charges to limit abuses of power. At Mulligan Breit McConnell, LLC we stand up every day for people being pushed around by the system and work to vindicate the wrongly accused.