ABH (Danny Barnard acting)

Danny acted for both father and son in relation to a fight outside the Hawley Arms pub in Camden Town. They were both charged with ABH, and additionally the son was charged with common assault in relation to a separate incident inside the pub. The son pleaded guilty to ABH so there was a trial in relation to the father for ABH and the son for common assault.

Further to an application to amend the indictment in light of the guilty plea, the case was no longer prosecuted as a joint enterprise. This greatly assisted the defence as the jury no longer could consider the actions of the co-accused.

In evidence the complainant did not attribute any of his serious injuries to the father. Therefore, a half-time submission was made of no case to answer, as it was submitted that no evidence of ABH had been adduced. The submission failed, however the judge added common assault to the indictment as an alternative, as he was of the opinion that an ABH was only just made out on the evidence. The jury had now effectively been directed away from returning a guilty verdict on an ABH which, on the evidence, could have been easily proved. However, they did not find that he acted in self defence and returned a guilty verdict on common assault for which the defendant received a 12 month conditional discharge.

Regarding the case against his son, the jury returned a not guilty verdict on common assault. They were invited, in a defence submission, to consider the lack of evidence to support his account, which they clearly listened to as evidenced by notes handed to the judge. Regarding the earlier guilty plea, he received a sentence of 3 months imprisonment which was suspended for 12 months.

Affray (Gary Conway acting)

Gary recently had a good result from the West Country: his client was facing a two-day trial for affray at Taunton Crown Court. Seven police officers as witnesses alleged that he charged at police with a knife.

The client entered a plea of not guilty and the defence called a surprise witness who was none other than the person who originally called police, as for some reason she had not been relied upon by the Crown. She was an excellent defence witness and undermined the police evidence, leading to the judge essentially calling two of the police officers liars in open court!

Indecent Images (Tony Meisels acting)

On Friday 25 April 2014 at Southwark Crown Court, Tony’s client received a suspended sentence of imprisonment after pleading guilty to making over 2,500 indecent images including 480 at level 4 and possessing 74 extreme pornographic images.

This sentence was imposed notwithstanding new sentencing guidelines which came into force on 1 April 2014 whereby a case such as this should now attract a sentence of immediate imprisonment. The excellent Jeremy Lynn of counsel was the instructed advocate.