Our 31-year-old client is an unemployed mother of two children; She was charged with destroy and damage property and common assault domestic violence related offences.
The prosecution allege that our client intentionally damaged her ex-partners vehicle and then assaulted him afterwards. Our client believing that she was the victim, she contacted police and informed them of what had happened; consequently, the police accused our client of committing two different offences and subsequently laid criminal charges against our client.
Upon approaching CDLA, our client’s matter was dealt with by our specialist criminal defence lawyer, Alex Istifan, who pursued a Section 32 application (Mental Health application) to divert our client away from the criminal justice system, consequently getting the criminal charges dismissed, for the purposes of then avoiding a criminal conviction.
On the day of the section 32 application hearing at the Parramatta Local Court, our Alex made lengthy submissions in support of the application, putting forth carefully obtained evidence to rebut any arguments which could be made against the application by prosecution.
Alex spent many hours, days and weeks in carefully preparing for the s32 application, was able to successfully convince the Magistrate to dismiss our client’s case pursuant to the section 32 application (now called a s14 application). Our client was discharged unconditionally following a psychologist report that we had prepared leading up to the hearing.
In turn our client’s charges were dismissed and the matter was finalised. What a great result by Alex.