When to present my evidence

[Pond31]

During the investigation process of my case I was arrest and bailed to my home address. One of my bail conditions was that I not contact my FA, which is a standard condition. Once the investigation was complete I was no longer under arrest and therefore no longer had bail conditions including having contact with my FA. Well my FA contacted me, she phoned me everyday for weeks, sometimes 8 times a day. I know I should have blocked her but I work in mental health and I knew she was in a bad place. I could not abandon her. YES even after she made a FA.

She did not rant or rave when we talked and we covered many topics from the hum drum to the very personal. The thing is that to me her contacting me appears to cast doubt on her story. If I had assaulted her why is she talking to me so much. I think that the contact just weakens her case.

I am not a total sucker and if needs be shall use the evidence of this contact in my defence. The question is when to use it. If I tell the OIC now they can contact the CPS and update them, this may then encourage them to decided NFA. Then my court worry would be over. However the OIC may just take the information and try to debunk what I tell them. Should I keep the evidence for court? As I know that it WILL produce reasonable doubt in the juries mind.

[Casehardened]

Hmm, your FA contacted you but can you be 100% sure that when the OIC contacts her to question her about this contact that she won't turn things around and say that you contacted her fiirst, so apparently putting you in breach of your bail conditions. Obviously you know her better than me but I would opine that if she made an FA in the first place she is quite capable of a second lie.

Having said this I can see where you coming from as I did exactly what you're suggesting, however in my case the OIC had previously advised my FA to change her phone number so the only way I could have known her new number is if she had contacted me first....I guess it was quite difficult for her to explain that!

[Peter1975]

There seems to be understandable confusion around the issue of bail being cancelled, you state that the investigation is finished but I am afraid that until there is a decision, you would be wrong to assume that the ending of bail means the end of an active investigation. Various police forces seem to have adopted a policy of de bailing in anticipation of the police and crime bill, but it should be seen as a measure of avoiding red tape and court time seeking extensions for bail rather than anything meaningful. You should consider yourself still on bail and the condition that you are not in contact with the accuser is to protect you as much as protect the FA.

I will advise extreme caution, no matter who initiates contact, witness intimidation is an extremely serious offence, the onus would be on you to prove that you did not intimidate a witness and this applies a year after a NFA, never mind when an investigation is ongoing.

I am assuming that you have been wise enough to record all of this contact and the content and I will suggest that you should seek legal advice with how to proceed. I would heavily advise against providing this to the OIC for reasons I just stated.

My advice to anyone is to avoid contact with your FA, as CH says above, it could be a trap and a further charge. Be careful.

[Franticwithworry]

Great advice here, pond31.

There are pros and cons to pretty much everything. We gave some evidence to the police early on, and it didn't do any harm. It didn't do any good either, and we've since learned that it could have done us a lot of damage by alerting the accuser to things they had forgotten about that undermined their complaint. The police can and do sometimes just take the evidence to the accuser and they change their statements. We were lucky, that didn't happen, but luck shouldn't come into it.