Quote from: mju7 on April 20, 2012, 07:54 pmQuote from: vlad1m1r on April 19, 2012, 11:43 pmWhen charged with a crime a defendant also has to instruct their lawyer to make a "defence statement" which will summarise the basis for the defence before any evidence from the Prosecution is released. In my opinion, this unfairly weights the case in favour of the Prosecution as if the defence is unwilling or unable to disclose details of key witnesses or evidence they wish to present at trial, then the Prosecution is under no obligation to disclose all the evidence against the defendant before the arrive in court. I am sure that is the other way round and the prosecution has to lay out their attack statement and release all evidence and unused evidence (I believe within 'reasonable' time) before the defendant has to make a defence statement. After this is seen I believe the defendant gets 28 days to prepare their defence statement. The prosecution will of course do their best to break the rules and put the defandant in the weakest possible position.No, the defence statement is submitted after an initial disclosure by the Prosecution which is a very brief summary of the case against the Defendant. Only then is any evidence (if any) released. See : http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/d_to_g/disclosure_manual/disclosure_manual_chapter_15/ - The deadlie for submitting a defence statement is 14 days for a Magistrate's Courts and 28 days for a Crown Court. It is not obligatory in either case but is considered a Civic Responsibility similar to jury duty - certainly a person cannot be held in contempt of court for failing to submit one. This said, it is designed to encourage pre trial disclosure of the defence's case - naturally only your Solicitor can decide what information is best put into a Defence statement and accordingly what evidence should be requested.Anyone living in the UK would do well to have a quick read through CPS guidelines on their site; hopefully you'll never need to have a working knowledge of the law but it can't hurt to do so. :-)V.