Family Law Proceedings Affecting Criminal Trial

How can family law proceedings affect your criminal trial? Let me give you a couple of examples. Say you’re a man and you’re charged with sexually assaulting your wife and you’re in the midst of divorce proceedings involving custody. Now, within those divorce proceedings, you’re going to be delivering affidavits on motions for custody. There’s going to be cross examinations on those. So there’s gonna be transcripts produced of your cross examinations in the family law proceedings. And there’s gonna be affidavits delivered. In the rape case in sexual intercourse involving your wife, you’re going to be going to trial say a year or two later in the Superior Court of Justice, whether it’s a judge and jury, a Judge alone. Now typically in this case, you’re going to be testifying. How can this be used against you? So let’s say you delivered an affidavit in the family proceedings and you say something in criminal court, you say x in criminal court, but yet in your affidavit, you said y, you’re going to be confronted with that by the prosecutor in court during your cross examination. And the Crown could argue that you’re not credible or reliable because you’re inconsistent. This happens a lot by the way, and it’s hard to even if you’re telling the truth, it’s hard to keep a person’s story straight. I mean, every time you tell something, whether you’re telling the truth or lying about it, it’s going to be slightly different. Let’s face it, no one can tell the same version of events, the exact same way every time. And if it’s a major inconsistency, it can be devastating. I’ve seen innocent people have with major inconsistencies. Maybe they were nervous at the time of their family proceedings. Maybe they’re nervous in criminal court, and all of a sudden they go oh my god, I just ruined my case. I’m gonna get convicted of this. So that’s how it can be used against you. It can be used to cross examine you in criminal court, either that your affidavit or your testimony and you’ll it’s called an examination for discovery, your cross examination on emotion in the divorce proceedings, which are subsequently produces a transcript and then the crown will cross examine you and that if they find that there’s an inconsistency when you testify during your examination in chief in the criminal court. This is a very effective technique which the Crown’s use. They’re professionals at it but the important thing to remember here is you need to be fully prepared right from the get go. During your divorce proceedings you need to work with your criminal lawyer to get a proper statement sent to your divorce attorney to make sure the affidavits are going to be consistent with what you’re going to testify to at the criminal trial. And finally, to be prepared properly. That’s the bottom line in this just takes place very early on. So this goes for sexual assault. There’s a lot that goes for domestic assault. Domestic assaults can range from assaults right up to a serious aggravated assault where the wife’s alleging that and again, wives are charged to we represent wives with assault and all sorts of offences so the family proceedings can be used against you. Now conversely, unfortunately, I might add this works for the alleged victim as well so the wife in the divorce proceedings may deliver an affidavit she may testify at the examination for discovery or cross examination is on motions in the family proceedings that can be used against her at the criminal trial. So for example, I do this all the time. I just did two recent big sexual assault trials so I certainly won both, which was which is good client was very excited about that, clients. In both of these cases, there was divorce proceedings, there was a custody battle. And the wife had claimed in both cases that you know, we maintain this as the motive to lie that they were claiming sexual intercourse and some abuse regarding the children, etc. It was all big quagmire in the affidavits. So the wife had put in both cases had produced affidavits stating this in the in the children’s proceedings had also testified on motions. At the trial both of them testified quite inconsistently with what they had said in both the affidavit and during the testimony, and we were able to expose them as being not credible or reliable and were able to win both cases. So this is a very important issue. It works both ways it can work against victims, it can work against an accused. The bottom line is whether you’re a victim or an accused or alleged victim or complainant or accused, you have to properly prepare before you deliver an affidavit or before you testify at your family proceedings because it can come back to bite you in the criminal court and in the hands of a skilled lawyer you’ll just be ripped apart if there’s an inconsistency they’ll expose it and you’ll be, there’s no way you’re going to win your case.