>From: Mike Crumley <mcrumley@airmail.net>
>
>Ever hear of circumstantial evidence?
>1) The truck has no scratches on it.
>2) You have a fight and she leaves madder than a wet hen.
>3) You go out later and the truck is scratched.
>If you have to go to small claims court, I would like my chances with that
>chain of events.
>Mike Crumley 97 V6 Auto
Mike,
Cicumstantial evidence is not a good stance to take in court. It refers to
the fact that the events occurred around the time that the defendant
(ex-girlfriend) just happened to be in the same general area of the offence
(keyed truck). Not too many judges will rule against a defendant in this
situation because the girl left, and at some point later the owner (sorry i
can't remember who it is) of the Dakota walked outside and saw that the
truck had been keyed. Any time in between the girl leaving and the owner
coming out someone else could have done the damage. Sorry that's how it
will go in court.
Now, if you say that before the girlfriend came over that the truck was
absolutely fine, and after she left it was only 2-3 minutes before you went
out and found the damage, then you're narrowing the time when someone else
could have committed the crime. Another area of time that will be
considered in court is the whole time that you two were inside before
ex-girlfriend storms out. Someone could have keyed the truck at that time.
Ok, so here's what you should do, 1)talk to a cop in your area and ask him
if it's legal to tape her confessing, 2)if it's ok then do it, 3)go to
her place with the tape (a copy of it) and let her listen to it, 4)also
tell her that one of your neighbours saw her key the truck. At this point
she should be pretty scared, so what you say it's going to cost XXXX amount
of dollars (show her a quote)and she should give you that money or else
you'll take all this evidence to the police and take her to court. And if
she doesn't come up with the money in a certain number of days then call the
cops and tell the story.
This whole process will make you look good when and if you eventually get to
court because it looks like you just wanted to get the money to fix the
truck, you didn't want to get the ex-girlfriend in trouble or anything like
that.
Well that's my advice, and no i'm not a lawyer, but my pop is and my bro is
in lawschool so i think it's wearing off on me.
Frank WJ
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:18:34 EDT