HELPrequired,
the best advice i could offer would be to get yourself a very good legal team. I too have just experienced something very similar and could have had a convicition recorded. In court you will see the benefit of spending some serious cash, and i mean serious cash on an experinced barrister.
But it all depends on : what you did!
: why you did it!
: history!
: referees!
There are so many things that i did to ensure that no conviction was recorded against me. If you would like to email me i will pass on the names of my legal defence who i'm sure would be more than happy to represent you in court.
At the end of the day if it costs a lot of money i'm sure it will be no where near the cash spent of years of training, which will all be down the drain if you have a criminal conviction.
Many will say that if you are concvicted an airline career is still possible, but being in the same situation as yourself in the past, the reaction i recieved from the wider community, aviation that is, was that a conviction was looked poorly on from an airline, or any other future employer.