2 reviews (3/5) and information for Horsman Solicitors Limited, Lewes

21/06/18 - Reviewed by Ruth Oliver

I have had contact with Horsman solicitors in their handling of the defence of a very vulnerable friend of mine. He had been accused of being seen on the street with a knife for between 10 and 60 seconds on a dark winters night by two security guards. In my opinion the defending solicitor failed to properly analyse and question a lot of inconsistencies between the statements of the two witnesses and the fact that they both totally changed their accounts of where my friend was supposed to have been when he was seen. What they originally stated, ie that he was outside his flat, on inspection was proved not to have been possible. The distance was too great to accurately perceive what someone had in their hand or even if they had anything at all. The witnesses changed their statements, presumably on prompting, to place the suspect further down the road than they originally stated, from which distance he could have clearly been seen. The solicitor totally failed to question this and other inconsistencies between their statements. In addition, he inadvertently revealed to the magistrates that my friend had previous convictions, something that they are not supposed to know. I do not feel that my friend received an adequate defence and in addition something was wrongly revealed that might have prejudiced the magistrates against him. He was sentenced to six months in prison.

Although I cannot vouch for my friend's innocence of the crime, the evidence as presented by the police was flimsy and inconsistent and I believe that a more thorough lawyer might have succeeded in presenting far more doubt about its credibility.

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