[Deadalice]

My question involves criminal law for the state of: Tennessee

I have a problem...Me and the guy got into it yesterday...He threw a camera at my car...the camera broke...I wasnt injured nor was the car. But for insurance purposes I wanted to file a regular police report. Well the officer suggested I file a domestic and pushed it on me to file one. The bf has a pending domestic with his ex. His bond aggreement was to not get in trouble and to not talk to his ex. If he gets picked up on the warrant he cant bond out and has to spend the 12 hours then court in the morning. I want to go to the judge at 8..court starts at 9 to stop the Charges..He has never hit me and what happened was stupid bs and should have never been viable for a domestic charge. I dont know what to do. I have even contemplated filing a false report. My record is clean so I know I could get pretrial but here in tn its a class d felony with a max of 2yrs to 15yrs prison sentence. HELP I dont know what to do.

[AllisonDanby]

In some states domestic violence do not have to involve physical abuse, throwing a camera at your car could be interpreted by the D.A. that he at least attempted to assault you. So did you already make the police report? if you have, then it is now out of your hands and D.A. will decide whether to file charges.

[Deadalice]

When I went up and made the report all I wanted to do was file a report for my car so I wouldnt be responsible for the camera. He already has a warrant on him...and Im going to talk to the judge in the morning..but when I went to file and according to the Tennessee Code Annotated Title 36, Chapter 3, Part 6. The officer cant suggest I file the domestic...he suggested I did and pretty much made me do it. See he looked up my bfs background and then decided to convince me to write up the report. Im not really sure what to tell the judge when I go talk to him. I do however want to fight this the best possible way I can because im about to send a man to jail for a year for not threating me and not hurting me and not maliciously hurt my property. No damage was done to me or my car. Just the bfs camera. The person that threatened me was his sister, which I told the officer I didnt not feel threatened by my bf but I felt threatened by his family. Should I just tell the judge everything Im telling you...? I really dont want him to lose a year of his life over something so stupid.

[aardvarc]

The problem you're going to face is that he didn't ACCIDENTLY throw the camera. When people who fit under the "domestic" umbrella (ie living together or have a child in common) do things that involve the words "arguement" and ANY type of property destruction (yes, even your OWN property), that's enough for the arrest, and typically enough for the DA to pursue the matter as a domestic violence case (because property destruction borne out of anger puts reasonable people in fear). That it's ok with you that this act occurred isn't really legally relevent - the DA can still pursue it, not only on behalf of you, but also on behalf of ALL of society - who deserves to be protected from someone who throws things around in fits of anger. Add to that his previous history and the warrant, and the case stacks against him pretty easily.

Remember, when calling police, they have a duty to investigate ANY incident that comes to their attention, and NOT just the incident or the "angle" that the complainant summons them for. Arguement + property damage = gonna be looked at as a domestic, no matter what spin gets put on it or the reason for the call (insurance report).

There's no point to trying to "get to" the judge in the morning, no judge will speak to any interested party outside of the courtroom about an active case, and, there are no charges for you to drop - the charges have been brought by the state, not by you, and only the DA can drop them. You, at this point, are only a witness. Of course you can lie about what happened, but be aware that doing so could mean criminal charges against YOU.

The best thing you can do to attempt to quell the situation at this point is to retain the services of the most experienced criminal defense attorney you can find to work on his behalf. If he can't afford private counsel, all is not lost - he can apply for a public defender (which isn't a BAD thing - they are the defense attorneys who spend MORE time in front of the local judges than anyone else and can often be in a unique position to know what to expenct, what kinds of pleas or deals might be considered,etc.).