Useless Evidence To Build A Harassment Case

Here are a couple of things to note when preparing your case, some of which we found very surprising at first, but later made much more sense as you watch the wheels of the legal system turn:

Character Witnesses Are Worthless - I found this kind of interesting. In your head you build up this great case with people having your back, willing to testify for what a great person you are and all that. Then we find out none of that matters. It's quite likely that anyone can find people that like them and will testify as a character witness, which would make even the smallest case last for days. They do not want to hear from people unless they have direct knowledge of or were witness to acts of harassment or assault.

Letters Of Testimony Are Worthless - Letters are good for pretrial negotiation, your lawyer (or you) can show these letters to your harassers attorney to say "we have these people that will testify", but the letters themselves can never be submitted as evidence, any attorney on earth would object since they can not cross-examine a letter.

It's Not Illegal To Be An A-hole - As we started talking to our original lawyer about the issues we mentioned weird behavior like her watching our every move, eavesdropping on our activites and such things. He stopped us and said that yes, it does suck, yes it is weird, but that isn't a crime. It can be used in court if you are trying to prove somebody has some sort of weird mental issue or something, but in terms of harassment, watching and eavesdropping isn't illegal if done from their property and really doesn't help most harassment cases much. Then he kinda chuckled and said "sadly, it's not against the law to be an asshole".

The thing you really need to keep in mind is that the judge wants to hear the facts pertaining to the case and actual instances of harassment. They do not want to hear blind accusations or hear from a huge list of witnesses that have nothing to say beyond "yeah, they are good people". Putting the court in this position could actually end up irritating the judge, and that is something you do not want to do.

Be quick, brief and accurate in getting straight to the point as thoroughly as possible. You don't need the most evidence possible, you need enough to prove your point and leave it at that.