Attempts to choke

If you agree that you have committed the offence and the police are able to prove all the elements of the offence, it is best to plead guilty at an early opportunity to receive the maximum discount. Currently the maximum discount available for an early plea of guilty is 25% of the sentence.

Furthermore, the early guilty plea shows the Court that you have remorse and contrition for your actions.

Our Lawyers at National Criminal Lawyers work closely with you to ensure that we obtain all necessary paper work to get you the best result.

The maximum penalty for the charge of attempts to choke (Section 37 of the Crimes Act) is twenty-five years imprisonment.

Please note these penalties are reserved for the worst kind of offending and are unlikely to be what you would receive.

If you decide to plead not guilty you will need to prepare to go to a Defended Hearing.

A defended hearing is where all the witnesses of that case are called to give evidence. The witnesses are both examined by the prosecution and tested by your defence lawyers.

National Criminal Lawyers employ only the best criminal lawyers and we have defended numerous people charged with Attempts to Choke and are experts at these hearings.

Some of the possible defences available for those charged with Attempts to Choke can include;

• If you were compelled to act in a certain way due to the circumstances, or the threats of another you may be able to argue “Duress”;
• If your actions were necessary to prevent a greater harm from occurring, you may have the defence of “Necessity”; Or
• If you were defending yourself or another OR yours or another’s property you may have a Defence of Self-Defence.

The Courts are not bound by statistics however there must be reasonable consistency in sentences. A Magistrate or Judge should have regard to what has been done in other cases. In Green [2011] HCA 45, the plurity judgement of French CJ, Kiefel and Creennan JJ stated:

“Equal Justice” embodies the norm expressed in the terms “equality before the law”. It is an aspect of the rule of law.

For Attempts to Choke offenders 46% of persons who plead or were found guilty received full time imprisonment whereas 21% received a suspended sentence.

In NSW, a court can impose any of the following penalties for a Attempts to Choke charge.

• Prison sentence
• Home Detention
• Intensive correction order (previously periodic detention)
• Suspended sentence
• Community service order (CSO)
• Good behaviour bond
• Fine;and or
• Section 10

However, from the 24 September 2018 new penalty’s will be replacing the above. They are as follows:

• Full time Imprisonment
• New ICO (ICO) with a home detention condition available
• New Community Correction Order (CCO)
• Fine and or
• New Conditional release Order (CRO)

Our client was charged with attempts to choke following an altercation with his girlfriend. We represented our client in his hearing where we successfully raised doubt in the prosecution’s case. We argued that the girlfriend did not report the allegations without delay and took four days to see a medical doctor who could not find any marks where his girlfriend had said he had used an electrical cord to choke her. As there was doubt about whether our client had attempted or choked and due to the lack of medical evidence he was acquitted of his charges.

In a second case our client was involved in an argument with her flatmate over a blocked toilet. The flatmate started punching her, and in self-defence, our client put her hands around d her flatmates neck and hit the flatmate with her fist. During the altercation there was one other witness who attempted to separate the parties. The Magistrate heard from all sides before determining that our client had indeed acted in self-defence against the flatmate and therefore was not guilty of the choke and other assault charges. The charge was thus dismissed against her.