I’ll try to keep this short. I feel like I haven’t slept in weeks, but I’m excited, and I want to share my good news with people who might appreciate these kinds of stories. I’m going to be very light on details, but I’m happy to respond with some more info tomorrow if anyone’s curious.
The long and short of it is that my ex girlfriend and one of her friends drunkenly chased me out of a bar a few months ago. They thought I stole a phone (I didn’t), so they came after me screaming threats, obscenities, and accusations. I told them I didn’t have it and tried to leave again, but they grabbed me from behind, tore my coat, and threw a punch at me. I shoved them off and shouted for them to stop touching me. Then I turned and jogged away. One of them started shouting for police as soon as I turned, but I sincerely thought she was just nuts, so I left. I was arrested within minutes.
The police did not believe a word I said. It would be a week before I was allowed to hear what the women actually told them (surprise. They lied. A lot). Based on the biased police investigation along with a series of outrageous lies which both women attested to, I was charged with two crimes: Domestic violence and assault and battery.
The legal battle has been a nightmare, especially because I live in Ann Arbor Michigan where they are notoriously harsh on males accused of DV. It cost me $6000, and I’ve lost 15 pounds from stress (my abs are looking fantastic), but I finally got my day(s) in court and the jury found me not guilty on both counts! The whole courtroom seemed happy. Even the prosecutor was smiling, because he knew he was stuck trying to convict me on BS charges (he told my lawyer his boss prevented him from dismissing the case because DV is never dropped around here).
I broke down crying as soon as the verdict came down. I can’t put into words how devastating it feels to be lied about like this and for everyone to believe it. The cops literally laughed at me when I told them that the women must’ve lied. The prosecutor offered me a deal where I’d plead guilty, do probation for a year, and have the charges dismissed with no record, but I refused it twice to roll the dice, and I beat those fucking bitches. The defense had FIVE possible witnesses to stack up against my lone testimony, and we fucking won.
One of the bitches was gloating to a friend of mine late last week. She said, “he should’ve taken the deal. He’s got no chance. There are three of us (two liars plus a single motorist who saw a small part of what happened) and one of him.” I’ve never felt relief like this.
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Thank you. It feels good. Hopefully it’ll make a really nice essay to help me get into law school. Even with so much on the line, I have to admit that I found the trial process really exhilarating. At first, I think my lawyer was annoyed at how involved I wanted to be with everything. I questioned all of his ideas and refused to let him alter the narrative because the truth was all I had going for me (he never wanted me to lie, but he wanted me to explain some of my actions with in simpler terms to remove unnecessary ambiguity). By the time we were in court though, I had earned his trust and respect and we were like a team. While he was questioning witnesses, he kept taking a break to come ask me if I could think of more questions to ask. We also had to go in the conference room to discuss how to use certain details, and make strategic decisions about what to say about everything. It was all so surreal because on the one hand, I was stressed beyond anything I’ve ever felt, and on the other, I was actually enjoying the feeling of lawyering the shit out of this case. Nobody was as invested as I was, so I knew EVERY SINGLE DETAIL backwards and forwards. I memorized the police reports and videos, and had dozens of pages of hand-written notes. The prosecutor was not ready for me on the stand.
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Thank you. I know I’m lucky. Hard to imagine how differently this could’ve gone if I didn’t have the support network I have.
Regarding facts, it was sort of a mixed bag. Here’s a list of some of the major pieces of evidence that came up during the trial:
The cellphone: The idiot women chased me outside and attacked me because they were positive that I stole a phone. They admitted to following me after I left, chasing me down the street, and “trying to grab the phone from me” because they didn’t believe me when I told them I didn’t have it. After I left the scene, they called for the police and said I robbed and assaulted them. Halfway through their interview, someone brought the phone out of the bar, exactly where I said it was. The dimwit police said NOTHING about this. The women’s story shifted smoothly from a robbery to a simple assault and DV case, and nobody batted an eye except me. The cellphone warranted one line in the police report. At the very end it said, “the cell phone was found inside.” That line helped me a lot.
My coat: This is the one piece of physical evidence, it may have won the case for me, and I almost missed it. The coat has 4 simple hook and eye fasteners, but I only ever use one of them. When they grabbed me from behind, the fastener broke. I didn’t notice it at first, but while I was in handcuffs being searched, I looked down and said, “somehow my coat got broken.” The body cam caught the audio and got a visual look at the front of the coat. In the days after the incident, I forgot all about the coat, but when I saw the statement the police wrote for me, I felt they misrepresented me. I demanded all the bodycam footage, and that’s when I heard my comment about the coat. I showed my lawyer, and he agreed that it was very important. While I was on the stand, my lawyer handed me the coat, and I explained its relevance to the jury. Given the general lack of evidence, this was huge.
The running: There were a few pieces of significant evidence against me, and the fact that I was running from the scene looked the worst for me. I actually got confused about where my car was parked (long story). When I left the bar, I would have needed to walk just 3 blocks south to get to my car. Instead, I sincerely believed my car was 3 miles north, and it was 30 degrees outside. I really was jogging on the sidewalk, under the streetlights, to get to where I thought my car was, but NOBODY believed me. Everyone assumed I was fleeing because the women had yelled for the police. I told the cops I was just trying to stay warm and cut down my time in the cold, and they laughed at me. It’s true, but it was difficult to explain. Luckily for me, one of the women admitted that by the time she exited the bar in pursuit of me, I had already moved almost a block. So she thought I may have been running already, before the crime even occurred. I can’t remember if that was true or not, but it was an accidental gift from them.
Witness testimony: Girls one and two told mildly conflicting stories on the night of, but the police REALLY helped them out, and they had the cracks sealed up by the time of the trial. I wasn’t allowed to play their interviews with police (even though they could play mine). Their testimony was massively different from mine, and they matched up, so this was the single most damning thing for me. Two sobbing little women claiming to have been attacked by one fairly large man. Fortunately, their story still had holes, and we pointed most of them out.
The 9-11 caller: After girl two started shouting for police, a Good Samaritan who only saw the very end (I pushed girl 1 off and ran away) called 9-11 and said “I just saw a man punch two women then run away.” By the time the caller contacted the women, it was clear that no one had been punched. The women sort of tried to tack punches onto their story but struggled to explain how I had been trying to throw punches but failed. It was weird. It ended up in the report as, “He may have tried to throw punches.” Anyway, the caller was really just trying to help. She didn’t see much, and she got the color of my coat (gray) wrong (she said brown). When the police arrived, they interviewed all three of the women together. Girl 2 (the main culprit) popped up and invented a wild story on the spot. The witness did her best to confirm that that’s basically what she saw, and then they separated girl 1 (my ex). Despite visibly struggling with what she was doing, she chose to lie and confirm the fabricated details. In the end, the prosecution chose not to bring the 9-11 caller to trial. She obviously must not have been saying anything useful to them, because as the only neutral witness, her testimony would have been crucial.
The police testimony: one of the officers who arrested me came to testify for the prosecution, but was more helpful to me. He told the prosecutor that I was calm and cooperative, that I seemed baffled and incredulous when I was handcuffed, that I was claiming to have been chased and grabbed, AND that he and his partner had not relayed my claims to the officers interviewing the women. As a result, the women were not even asked whether they grabbed me or not until the weekend before the fucking trial (they were adamant by that time that they had not grabbed me. Again, they kept saying “we were reaching for the phone” even though it was established that I didn’t have the phone). I had already taken and passed a polygraph on that very question (couldn’t mention it at trial), but nobody even asked them the damn question. So frustrating.
That’s basically it. My testimony went well. The prosecutor mixed up some facts, and I corrected him. I told the truth as best I could, and I knew that the law and the facts were on my side. The only real doubt was whether or not a man could still receive the benefit of the presumption of innocence when two crying women accuse him of a crime without proof. In Ann Arbor, I just couldn’t be sure. The jury was initially 6 women and 1 man (6 actual jurors plus an alternate). By the end, it was 4 women and 2 men who came up with the unanimous Not Guilty verdict. They were all smiling and happy for me. I was crying, my lawyer cried, my family was clapping, and even the judge and prosecutor seemed relieved. Even still, there will be no real justice. The women got away with everything, and they very nearly got a conviction. I would have needed proof (like a video) to see actual justice. The police and courts are more than happy to go after a man in ambiguous cases like this, but if they’re going to lift a finger to protect my rights, I better have stone cold proof.
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Out of everything, this is one of the few things that I’m still unsure about myself. By the time that my attorney told me we couldn’t play the tapes (two days before the trial), he had given me so much other news (no mentioning the polygraph, no chance that the women will be subject to any penalties, no going after the police, etc.) that I didn’t really look into the reasoning very much. He (my lawyer) basically said, “the women aren’t on trial, you are.” Im not technically certain whether we were prohibited by rule from playing the tapes, or if my attorney had made a unilateral strategic decision not to open that can of worms.
The tapes are full of crocodile tears and pleas for sympathy, so they may have hurt more than helped. They made the police look bad, but by the time of the trial the women had been coached to adhere to the story they fabricated on the night in question. Overall, they wouldn’t have done much for us, and who knows how the jury would respond to images of a crying woman. I find her behavior shameful and disgusting, but that’s because I know her and I was there. Could be different for the jury.
I was. We had all been drinking for nearly 5 hours. I blew a .118 at the police station. The women obviously weren’t tested. “Victim” status has its perks. They actually went to another bar and continued drinking until the wee hours of the morning (my ex was sending drunken, gloating text messages to my friends at 6am) while I sat in jail.
Yes. For one thing, our relationship is the reason that I was charged with DV instead of basic assault. If it weren’t DV, the whole case would have been dismissed, but Ann Arbor is notorious for going hard on DV. The prosecutor literally told my lawyer that he wanted to dismiss it, but his boss wouldn’t allow him to drop DV charges. It’s kind of political.
Beyond that, there’s also a revenge motive for my ex that never came up in the trial. I cheated on her last year and told her. I’m not proud, but it is what it is. We had a terrible relationship, but kept coming back to each other. I confessed my affair, and part of me hoped that this would burn the bridge. We didn’t speak for ~4 months, but she contacted me in September, and things began to flare back up like a nasty case of herpes. The night in December was literally the first time we went out in public together. I’m still not sure how much of what she did was a pre-meditated setup, how much was opportunistic revenge, and how much was just sheer bad luck.
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Unfortunately there weren’t. As soon as I was released from jail, I started searching. I called city hall, the bar we were at, and walked around the area searching for any sign of a camera. A video would have changed everything...
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Right you are, my friend. At this point, I’m crafting a counter punch, but I want to be careful to protect myself against allegations of harassment, stalking, threatening behavior, etc.. I have zero intention of doing anything illegal, but I would love to put up flyers with their faces, post details of their crimes on FB, and generally find any way that I can to let their friends and family know the truth about what they’ve done. I just have to be careful and restrained. I know they’re still looking for ways to paint me is the real villain in all this.
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Few things about this:
I had no phone. That’s why I was jogging to my car (or so I thought).
The woman who physically assaulted me was my girlfriend at the time, and I loved her. We had a shitty relationship (obviously) but we were NEVER violent with one another, and I never would have called the police on her for something like this. (She wouldn’t have either. It was her crazy friend that started screaming for police. When they arrived and asked what happened, the psycho jumped up and started lying like crazy in front of everyone. That chick caused basically all of this.)
The assault was extremely minor. At the time, I was just glad to get away and be done with the stupid situation. It was all a misunderstanding that got blown MASSIVELY out of proportion. I was absolutely shocked when the police stopped me and arrested me. That was the moment that I knew for sure that they must’ve lied, but it would be more than a month before I could watch the videos of their interview and see the full extent of what they tried to do to me.
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