6/6/05

The defendant was charged with Aggravated Child Molestation. Throughout the preparation of the defense, it was known that the prosecution's case was lacking in many areas. The prosecution kept threatening trial and offering terrible plea offers. The defendant stuck to his guns and directed us to pursue a trial so he may be acquitted.

In the end, it wasn't the fact that the victim recanted her statement and affirmatively said nothing happened which persuaded the prosecutor to dismiss the case. It wasn't the lack of medical evidence to verify an officer's claims of what a doctor had said. It really wasn't even the child interview video by the Sunshine Center per se that made the prosecutor doubt his case.

During an intermission between two interrogation sessions with the 'forensic interviewer' which were not going well for her, there was a small section of the video that the prosecution wasn't aware of because noone was in the room to see it, nor did anyone actually watch the video afterward. Completely aggravated that the interviewer did not believer her that nothing actually happened, the child victim watches the interviewer leave, waits a moment, turns to the camera, and gives it the middle finger!

Because we were the first to actually watch the video, we saw the girl's message to the prosecution before they did. We decided to push for a trial, which made the prosecution dig through their evidence to find out why. Shortly after, a dismissal followed and the defendant was free to go back home to his family.