Jacksonville Criminal Lawyer Blog

Domestic battery is perhaps the most serious misdemeanor crime in Florida and one that the State Attorney's office takes very seriously in the Jacksonville, Florida area. However, many of them turn out to be weak cases for the State and cases where the true facts are far different from what is written in the police report.

The law office of Shorstein & Lasnetski, LLC handles a lot of domestic battery cases in Jacksonville, Florida and the surrounding areas. One question we get quite a bit is if the police and the State can proceed with domestic battery charges when the alleged victim decides she wants to drop the charges. The answer is that the State can charge a defendant with domestic battery and continue with the prosecution when the alleged victim wants to drop the charges. Once the police have been called and made an arrest, the police officer prepares a report and sends the file to the State Attorney's Office. That file will contain the police report and may also contain pictures of injuries and/or witness statements. It is up to the prosecutor, not the alleged victim, whether or not official domestic battery charges will be brought.

However, when the alleged victim wants to drop domestic battery charges, that is still very relevant. When we handle domestic battery and other domestic violence cases, we always try and work with the alleged victim to learn the true facts surrounding what happened and determine if the alleged victim wants to drop the charges. When the alleged victim wants to drop the domestic battery charges, we can use that information and present it, along with other information, in a way that convinces the prosecutor to drop the charges or at least informs the prosecutor that the domestic battery case is not as serious as he/she may have thought from reading the police report and obtain a favorable result for our client.

So, the short answer to the common question is that the police and the State can pursue a domestic battery case even when the alleged victim wants to drop the charges. However, it is almost always helpful to a defendant in a domestic violence case when the alleged victim does want to drop the charges, which is often the case. In that scenario, we can use the alleged victim's intention to drop the charges along with other beneficial information to achieve a good result for the accused in a domestic battery case.

Police in Jacksonville, Florida and the surrounding counties of Clay County, Nassau County and others make a lot of arrests for domestic battery and similar domestic violence related charges. What often happens is there is some incident, whether it is an argument, a disturbance or an actual physical altercation, and someone calls the police. The police arrive and have to make an assessment of what happened after the fact. It can be a difficult thing to do since one or both of the parties are highly emotional and are not in the right frame of mind to discuss the incident rationally. The police often make quick decisions to arrest someone, often the male, write a report and move on to the next case. The report is often one-sided and paints a picture that appears more serious and incriminating than what actually occurred. The result may be a domestic battery charge against someone that is not warranted.

At Shorstein & Lasnetski, LLC, we analyze a lot of domestic battery cases and the evidence that the police contend supports the charge. There are several ways for criminal defense lawyers, especially those experienced in domestic battery cases, to defend against domestic battery charges. Once the incident is over, the alleged victim usually calms down and decides she does not want to prosecute. If done the right way, this can be an important tool for a defendant in a domestic battery case. Additionally, once the alleged victim calms down, she will often discuss how the actual facts of the incident are different, and less serious, than what was initially reported and what is in the police report. The police do not often conduct a full investigation when they respond to a domestic battery call. If the alleged victim is claiming an injury, the police may not document it with pictures which calls into question the existence or seriousness of the injury. If an altercation allegedly occurred, did the police take pictures of the surrounding area, i.e. the room in the home where it supposedly occurred, to show that something did happen there? If there were any witnesses such as roommates, neighbors or guests that would have seen or heard a disturbance, are there written or recorded statements?

When we investigate domestic battery cases, we always ask these questions and others and often find that a complete investigation was not done. With these holes in the domestic battery case and the alleged victim's intention to drop the charges (or even without this last element), domestic battery cases will often have several good avenues of defense that result in good results for the client.

I thought it was a good time to address this question which we get quite often from individuals in and around Jacksonville, Florida about victims and alleged victims trying to drop domestic violence charges against a person who was arrested for, or charged with, a domestic violence related offense. There was a recent article on www.Firstcoastnews.com which referenced a study by the National Institute of Justice that found that incidents of domestic violence increase during difficult financial times. The article noted that money issues were the major cause leading to domestic violence. Clearly, we are going through a period that is bringing significant financial distress upon many families in Jacksonville and throughout the country.

It is not uncommon for some sort of domestic incident to occur, whether it is a heated argument, one person pushing a spouse or significant other or a more violent incident where the police are called and respond to the scene. This is often followed by an arrest and formal charges. It is also quite common for the person who called the police (the victim or alleged victim) to later decide that he/she does not want to pursue the case, i.e. wants to drop the charges. The reality is that the person who called the police or who is an alleged victim or a real victim does not have the authority to drop the charges. He/she can go to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office or local police or the prosecutor's office and ask them to drop the case, but once the police and/or the prosecutor's office get involved, that decision is up to them. The police or prosecutor will likely listen to what the alleged victim has to say, but he/she is not bound by anything that is said. Because of the high number of purported victims who later request to drop domestic violence charges, it is very common, perhaps more likely than not, for the police and prosecutors to pursue a domestic violence case until the very end, including a trial, when the alleged victim is not cooperating. This is particularly true where there is other evidence of domestic violence, such as independent witnesses, statements from either party or a witness and/or visible injuries that are memorialized in photographs or a police report.

This is not to say that the police or prosecutors will never drop a domestic violence case when an alleged victim makes the request. This does happen. However, there is clearly a misconception among people that when a person who claims he/she was the victim of a domestic violence incident later tells the police or the prosecutor that it did not happen or that he/she does not want to pursue the case, that means the case just goes away.

According to the Florida Attorney General's Office, Duval County (Jacksonville) was one of five counties with the highest rates of domestic violence fatalities in Florida in 2006. As a result, the Florida Attorney General's Office is expanding a pilot program to deal with the increasing domestic violence fatality crime rates. According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, reports of domestic violence-related manslaughter or murder were up 17% from 2006 to 2007 in Florida.

The program is called INVEST (Intimate Violence Enhanced Services Team), and it offers prevention and protection services for people considered to be at high risk of suffering a fatal domestic violence attack in Duval County and the other high risk counties. Participants in the program, including the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office and the Hubbard House, attempt to identify those at high risk of being victims of a domestic violence fatality and make contact with the victim and the suspected offender to prevent the violence from occurring. The program is actually derived from a similar program created in Jacksonville, Florida where, despite the continued high risk, domestic homicides are down an average of 46% in the seven years since the Jacksonville program has been in place.