During the pandemic, there was a huge blow up at a local high school on social media of girls coming out and making accusations against other high school students, male high school students saying that they had sexually assaulted them.
In a matter of three weeks, I picked up five cases from that same local high school.
And out of those five cases, four of them, I was able to intervene with the investigating officers who were writing up charges ranging from sexual battery to forcible rape. I was able to convince the detective in four out of those five cases to recommend to the prosecutors when they got the case that they not file charges. That, the cases did not have merit and that they were going to be too difficult for them to prosecute.
But more importantly, the stories told by those involved and accused were very different and very conflicting. And I had already gotten text messages, social media posts and other information pulled off the internet and provided that to the detectives.
Why did we pull the information and hand it over? Well, law enforcement officers don’t always go out of their way to do a lot of electronic research. They don’t really have the time to get into social media and pull out the evidence. They just go by what the alleged victims are telling them So, sometimes sharing the information gets cases to be dropped before they get filed.
Hi I’m James Tedford, aka “Ted”. I’m the lead trial attorney at Tedford & Associates and I’m a fourth generation Californian. If you are facing charges for a crime in Pasadena, you need to get an attorney on your side as soon as possible.