Our client was charged with attempted armed robbery following an allegation by the alleged victim that our client was part of a group of three that threatened to stab him and steal money. The part of the alleged incident which went down in a suburban shopping centre carpark was captured on CCTV but the moment where a knife was allegedly produced was obscured by parked vehicles. The alleged victim claimed that he had attended the location to purchase cannabis from one of group. The alleged victim claimed that the group became intimidating when he declined to proceed with the deal and escalated into an attempt to steal money from him with threats of violence. During the alleged attempted robbery, the alleged victim made a 000 call which prompted police to attend the shopping centre. Once there, one group of police officers spoke to the alleged victim, who invented a tall tale of being the target of an ethnic group historically robbing people in an around the shopping centre. A different group of police officers arrested our client and his associates after they had a beverage at the pub only metres away from the scene of the alleged robbery.
Our client retained our services from the moment he was arrested. We reviewed the significant amount of CCTV frame by frame, which contradicted the alleged victim’s narrative. The evidence also showed he had asked his partner to lie when questioned by police and that the reason he was at the agreed location was in fact to sell cannabis to one of the group. We were confident that once the evidence was reviewed by the Office of the DPP, they would agree with our assessment that the alleged victim lacked any measure of credibility and there was no reasonable prospect of securing a conviction. Weeks before our client’s first disclosure committal date, we were informed, as predicted, that the submission to discontinue the charge had been accepted.
