Our attorneys Kerry L. Armstrong and Vanessa Albert are pleased to share that our client was found not guilty last Friday.
The client, a U.S. Border Patrol agent, was accused of assaulting his girlfriend at the U.S. Grant Hotel while visiting San Diego last June. The case was tried before Judge Charles Rogers.
Both the client and his girlfriend were drinking the evening of the alleged assault. After the client went to bed, his girlfriend went through his phone because of past infidelity issues in their relationship.
She found messages to and from the client to another woman he met in training. Upon discovering the messages, the client’s girlfriend woke him up, screaming at him while aggressively referencing the phone.
The girlfriend claimed that the client “lost it” and assaulted her eight separate times that night. She said that the client grabbed her by the neck and pinned her against the wall, squeezed her face, put her in a headlock, and slammed her down on the bathroom floor.
The girlfriend also gave officers a video of the client from months earlier during a drunken episode where he slapped her phone out of her hands. She claims that she almost suffered a broken arm and received several bruises that night. In addition, she accused the client of trying to hurt their dog.
Once the video surfaced, our attorneys Kerry Armstrong and Vanessa Albert thought that winning the case would be unlikely. However, the girlfriend recanted at trial and claimed that she was still aggressively touched.
The client did not testify during the trial. The prosecution also called Detective Joel Sandoval of the San Diego Police Department as an expert witness on domestic violence. However, this testimony carried little weight with the jury.
The jury voted not guilty on both counts of domestic violence based on self-defense. They also acquitted the client of preventing the girlfriend from filing a police report.
Attorney Kerry Armstrong tried to settle the case months ago, but the prosecution wanted to go after the client’s badge and prevent him from working in law enforcement. The client was on desk duty for several months, but returned to his regular duties on Monday.
Kerry L. Armstrong
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