Criminal question:
A friend of mine has been arrested and suprisingly charged with robbery from a commerical premises, he was pointed out by 'witnesses' to the police who arrested him, and put him in an identity parade infront of the 3 'witnesses' 2 of which had pointed him out in the first place. He had been at home all night with his family, has not been to the premises in years, the police siezed cash from his house which was to be used for christmas presents so there can not be any fingerprints of anybody who worked in the premises which was robbed, his clothes were taken but there will obviosuly not be any footprints etc to match him, and there will be no cctv from the premises (which I imagine was conviently not on-this looks like a blatent 'inside-job' which possibly went a bit wrong, hence the people possibly involved pointing out the first person they saw). He did try to run when the men ran towards him pointing him out to a police car which quickly turned round to head towards him as he was smoking something he shouldnt have been and assumed this is why he was being targeted along with the shock of walking out of his house to the commotion starting. The worry is now that the police have charged him, he has repeatedly asked what evidence they have in order to do this, the officer dealing with this is off sick and the one he spoke to said that he did not know but there is enough evidence for the CPS to think that there is a case. He has now got to go to magistrates court next week, he has asked to meet his solicitor to discuss the situation but was told that there is no point as he wont find out what evidence there is against him until they get to the court. Is this right? Surely he has a right to know what evidence there is against him, as there cannot possible be any. It is impossible. The police have just taken a few people from far aways word that they saw him apparently opening a safe and that they chased him away. he was arrested at 6.50 and apparantly the robbery happened at 6.25. it is a 10 min walk to his house. so in 25 mins he would have had to get home, avoiding all the cctv camera of the surrounding shops, get changed, dispose of his old clothes (even though they said he was wearing the clothes he had on, but obviously there will be no material/footprints matches as he was never in the premises and the stolen money and then decide to walk out his house and up the road towards the scene of the crime. something absolutely stinks but we cannot understand how the CPS thinks there is enough evidence, why they believe these so called witnesses (if they looked a bit harder i'm sure they could link them to the owner of the premises) and it is now getting worrying that it has got to the point where he has got to go to court, also his solicitor (who was supplied by the police when first arrested) wont meet him to discuss what is going to happen or possible sentances, we dont even know what is going to happen when he gets to the court, will that be the actual court case or will it just be them deciding wether to pursue it and possibly refer it to crown court?nobody will tell him anything. The only thing he knows is that he walked out his house and was arrested for something he knows nothing about due to the lies of a few men who apparantly witnessed a safe being robbed. Has anybody got any ideas what will happen when he gets to court, and how it could possibly have got this far?
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