Lisa Pelosi: With domestic violence cases you really want to hire someone who has experience with these cases because there’s a level of sensibility that you want your attorney to have when dealing with the prosecutor. I’ve never found that turning the victim into a horrible person is not a good strategy.
It Is Unethical to Try to Defame a Victim While Defending a Domestic Violence Client
Unfortunately, a lot of criminal defense attorneys who don’t have my background try to make the victim into a bad person. It’s a much better approach to work closely with the prosecutor’s office to be open and explain the history of the relationship from my client’s point of view to show the prosecutor that it’s not one-sided, that there are 2 sides to the coin and you want to get all the facts that my clients have into the hands of the prosecutor to delude some of the complaining witness is saying so that the prosecutor gets a fair balance of both sides of the issue.
Notable Case Examples for Domestic Violence Charges
Interviewer: With all these cases that you’ve done is there a particular case that stands out as one of the more unique cases that you’ve done or maybe one of your more favorite victories?
Lisa Pelosi: Sometimes with domestic violence it’s not a major case that’s gotten press or that type of case. Sometimes it’s just the smaller cases where you really work hard and fight for your client to get a family reunited and have the order of protection taken away. Those are the cases that have meant more to me because a positive result has come of the case, perhaps my client would have gotten some alcohol treatment and then once that’s taken place or some anger management then the family is actually in better shape than they were before the arrest.
With my career with domestic violence cases that is probably been my favorite type of case is when I could see the order of protection go away and the family get reunited and the children be back with their family.
Polygraph Tests Are Not Admissible In Domestic Violence Cases in New York
Interviewer: In cases like that do you ever utilize a polygraph or anything like that?
Lisa Pelosi: I have in one case, but they’re not admissible in court but sometimes I will take the client to talk to the prosecutor if I feel like there’s been some lying going on or false allegations. Sometimes the prosecutor needs a lot of supporting evidence or information from me to try to show that the person who made the accusations lies and has lied in the past.
