University head chef avoid conviction for domestic violence common assault offence at Downing Centre Court

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Our client is a head chef at a Sydney University and runs his own catering business throughout the NSW Agriculture society. He was charged by NSW Police with a court of common assault domestic violence. He was also facing an AVO against him as a result.

During an argument between our client and his partner, his partner had ended up taking our client’s phone away from him. This prompted our client to get the phone back.

While attempting to get his phone back from his partner, our client had picked up his partner by the neck before slamming him onto their bed in their bedroom. His partner called police and made a complaint causing our client to be faced with these charges.

Our client’s only purposes in doing this to his partner was solely to retrieve his phone back. The incident of assault occurred over split seconds.

While our client had an option to explore further the self defence wrought, he chose to end the court proceedings early and plead guilty. Accordingly, our defence lawyer Ahmad Faraj, got to work very quickly by negotiating with police to change the police set of facts as to what and how it all occurred.

Changing the police facts was critical as it is the document read by the Judge in court before a sentence is imposed. As a result, there was considerable back and forth with the prosecution. One of the crucial parts of the facts that Ahmad managed to delete was assertions in it that our client had choked his partner, which was not true.

Ahmad then appeared at the Downing Centre court to represent our client. During the sentence, Ahmad pointed out the provocation by our client’s partner and many other important aspects of the case that the police omitted to include.

Ahmad also pointed out and produced evidence as to the effects of a criminal record on our client’s employment.

In the result, the Court agreed with Ahmad and sentenced our client with a non-conviction Conditional Release Order (CRO). This meant that our client has no conviction against him and is free to get on with life.

Published on 15/10/2021