Lied to the police in a witness statement to protect my boyfriend..?

That completely depends on the severity of the incident. This really isn't a particularly serious case...

What are you talking about? Many of the cases on the CPS website involve minor motoring offences.

I've also worked twice for the CPS. They really don't have the time, money, or room in prisons to send someone down for lying about their boyfriend being in a drunken (probably not serious) fight. Assaults aren't prosecuted and neither are most ABH's. Unless this guy had bones broken, organs punctured, had his face seriously deconstructed, literally nothing will happen to her.

Do you genuinely think the OP could be serving prison time for this?

If caught out - yes.

If that's true, that's pretty depressing.

I said she shouldn't lie to the authorities in the future, not me.

Well, I disagree with that analysis. I have seen a lot more minor assaults being heard in the Magistrates' Court. The CPS won't refrain from charging on the basis of what you have described, so whatever was going at your office was clearly untoward.

No. Your post advised her to lie to the police if interviewed again (in its fourth and fifth sentences). Then you said you wouldn't advise her to lie (which you had just done).

However, this really does not matter at all as the police would probably take this case no further and leave it as it stands.

A quick search on Google news for "perverting the course of justice" gives (amongst many, many others):

Lied to Police about someone else's speeding offence - 16 months.

Maxine Carr provided a false alibi for Ian Huntley - 3 years.

Lying about who was driving the car when speeding - 200 hours community service and a share in a £1,500 fine.

Taking the blame for someone else speeding - 12 weeks.

Another taking the blame for speeding - 4 months imprisonment suspended for a year, 200 hours community order and £750 costs.

Claiming to be someone else with car insurance - 8 month suspended prison sentence, 8 sessions of a probation service women's group, 6 month supervision order, 8 penalty points, £100 victims' surcharge.

Confessing to causing an accident someone else did - 3 months detention suspended for a year, 120 hours community work.

Saying your car was stolen when your partner had an accident in it - 6 months.


I think you are in deep poo.

But I feel sorry for the poor bugger who had to be taken away in an ambulance, who had two witnesses, who have lied.

You use the word "probably" rather too much, which indicates how much your advice is speculative and guesswork. I would take my liberty a trifle more seriously than that if I were the OP.

If the police wish to talk to her again it seems likely it will be to clarify her written statement, and to challenge her with CCTV footage of her clearly knowing who the attacker is. Whether she lies again is likely to have a very large influence on whether the matter is taken any further. To do so would compound her original offence. This will be her one chance to come clean and maybe escape justice; she should not ignore it.

She may well have to identify her boyfriend in order to escape prosecution for what the courts will most likely see as a more serious crime than any her boyfriend may have committed.

Advising her to lie again (as you have done) is breathtakingly bad advice.

Surely people have learned lessons from what happened, very famously, to Chris Huehne who lied over something as trivial as a minor motoring offence and ended up in gaol, along with his wife? He went to gaol when the original offence meant a small fine and points on his licence.

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Is it acceptable practice for lawyers to advise their clients to lie to the police?

I thought that was what lawyers were for?