Sex Crimes Attorney in Washington, DC, District of Columbia

What possible defenses might be open to me if I’ve been charged with a sex crime?

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So the possible defenses in sex crimes really are determined by the circumstances. In many sex crime cases, the parties actually know each other. In those cases, one of the most common defenses is consent, meaning that if one person is accusing another of sexual assault, the defense is that, although the sexual act did occur, that the other party who is the complainant in this case did consent to that act. This is usually a common defense when it’s a boyfriend and girlfriend or even husband and wife or two people that are on a date. But in order to put on that defense, of course, the people usually – they know each other.

Another defense is simply misidentification, and these cases, of course, come when the two parties do not know each other, they are not in a relationship, and one party accuses the other of sexual assault, sometimes violent, and the defense is simply that they’ve got the wrong person, that the complainant has pointed out somebody that was not the actual perpetrator. And sometimes with that defense, the defendant has an alibi or sometimes it’s simply that he or she may have looked like the person that actually did commit the crime.

So a third defense in sexual assault cases is fabrication, and that defense is simply that the complainant made up this assault, that it never happened. This usually is most common, again, in cases where the two parties know each other, and often part of that defense will include that one party is angry at the other, and because of that, there was motivation to fabricate a sexual assault. That is a very common defense, and especially in cases where people are in what would be called a volatile relationship.

Washington, DC criminal defense lawyer Jay P. Mykytiuk talks about the possible defenses used for someone charged with a sex crime.

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