Opening Statement
Your honor,
I had intended to write a much more comprehensive opening statement, however personal reasons have resulted in me not being as available as I would have liked for this case. However I do not wish to delay the court anymore and so will submit the following opening statement, and instead present the majority of our arguments in more detail throughout witness discovery and our closing statement.
From the beginning of this case we have seen nothing but police misconduct. There was misconduct when the police failed to correctly gather evidence of any wrongdoing, there was misconduct when the police illegally arrested my client - dragging him through the streets in a public shaming, and there was misconduct when the Prosecution sought to deprive my client of his counsel. At every single point in this trial the Prosecution has sought to deny my client his rights, and even now after 2 weeks my client still finds himself at their mercy - despite overwhelming evidence of their failures.
At this point in the trial it should be painfully obvious to anyone that it is completely impossible for the Prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that crimes were in fact committed. I mean let us look at the evidence:
1) Alerts gathered from their 'crime watchers system', alerts that they have admitted can easily be false reports of a crime. Furthermore these alerts fail to provide any material evidence on the nature of the alleged crime: they do not report who was affected, the time, the date, where it took place, nothing.
2) The Prosecution provides frankly bizarre "statistical analysis", the bulk of which is using data gathered from the 31st of May - when the alleged crimes took place on the 19th. Now you don't have to be a data scientist to know that data gathered on the 31st does not give you ANY insight on what happened on the 19th. If I were planning a garden party for the 19th, I would not check the weather report for the 31st - it simply makes no sense as a point in which to collect data.
3) The Prosecution, in a last ditch effort to build a case against my client, went out into the public and begged anyone who wanted to come forward as a witness, or even in some cases potential victim, to my clients alleged crimes. Let me be very clear, what the Prosecution will be presenting in these witnesses is unverified and very likely to be fantastical - anyone could have come forward to the Prosecution and claimed that they were a victim of my client, and the Prosecution being so desperate would accept them and put them on the stand. We will prove that these witnesses have zero credibility or believability.
And in sight of all this "evidence" we are faced with one truth, my client still has not been told what he is being put on trial for. The defence has not been given receiprical discovery - we do not know who my client is accused of having murdered, we do not know who my client is accused of robbing, we do not know how much my client is accused of having stolen - it is a complete impossibility for the defence to put up a defence to these crimes. In order to prove that my client has not murdered anyone, for example, we would have to prove all of his activities since the day he was born - because the claim is not specific, just that at some point in his life my client is alleged to have murdered someone. This entire case is built on one thing, the 'crime watchers system', however the system doesn't work. And if the system doesn't work, the case doesn't either.