When a Good Night Out Goes Bad.

​Has this ever happened to you? You and your friends go out, someone gets a bit rowdy and has a run in with the Police, and while you’re trying to stop them, YOU get in trouble in the process? It’s more common than you think, and situations like this can quickly get out of control. The combination of heavy drinking and a sense of duty can make for a ruined night and further consequences down the road.

In this case, we represented a couple who we’ll call Jim and Pam. For reasons which will be revealed, Jim was charged with contravening direction and obstructing police, and Pam was charged with committing a public nuisance, contravening a direction, and obstructing police.

Jim and Pam were out at an event, got pretty drunk, and things got a little bit rowdy – Jim got into a fight with someone, so Pam got angry at Jim, and it all escalated quite a bit... Jim and Pam end up getting thrown out of the event by security and Police. As Jim and Pam are leaving, she starts slinging swears at Police.

The Police read a direction to them both, stating they must leave the premises and move on by 300 meters otherwise they’ll be committing an offence and be arrested. While this direction is being read out, Pam keeps walking away from the Police, obstructing the Police’s duty to read the direction.

The pair begin to move on however they don’t move far enough and are given a warning by Police to continue on or be arrested. The couple starts to move again, however Pam starts walking back to the Police and the event, leading her to be arrested. Jim starts to run after Pam, trying to stop her from walking back and getting arrested by Police.

​As Police yell at Jim to walk away from Pam, he refuses to listen and tries to defend his partner while resisting Police arrest. The pair were arrested and taken to the watchhouse and later served with notices to appear, being charged with the above offences.

At sentencing, we were able to get Jim and Pam a pretty good deal, especially since Jim had a semi-relevant previous criminal history. We were able to argue that it should be taken into consideration that they were both heavily intoxicated and in an agitated state – whilst this is not an excuse for their behaviour, it certainly lends a bit of an explanation.

Jim was served with a $500 fine and a recorded conviction, whilst Pam got fined $1000, 40 hours of community service but with no conviction recorded. If you’re thinking that it seems that Pam got the worse end of the stick even though this was her first offence, you’d be correct since Pam (despite being a bit of a goody-two-shoes) essentially instigated the incident, not Jim.

Having the best representation to explain your situation to the court can make all the difference in sentencing. If you’ve been like Pam and Jim or in a similar incident, do one of the only right things they did and contact Brisbane Criminal Lawyers for a free consultation.

This is the summary of an actual case. Certain details have been omitted to protect the privacy of our client. We select and summarize cases which are informative and provide no guarantee that similar results are achievable in all cases. This summary does not constitute as legal advice 

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