Deferred Prosecution Agreements – A Rolls Royce Service
“If Rolls-Royce were not to be prosecuted in the context of such egregious criminality over decades, involving countries around the world, making truly corrupt vast payments and, consequentially, even...
View ArticleWoman jailed for plotting to let man rape her daughter
Introduction We haven’t yet looked at the ‘new’ s236A sentence, part of the ever more complicated area of the criminal law that is sentencing, but a good example of its use came up on 23rd January...
View ArticleAlastair Main – city lawyer sentenced for slapping woman’s bottom
Introduction Lawyers breaking the law tend to make it into the news. So when a 35 year old man was sentenced for sexual assault (and racially aggravated common assault) following his behaviour at a...
View ArticleJudge gets 6 years for stealing from clients
Introduction Sadly, it often feels like we could fill a whole blog with lawyers who go wrong. On 27th January 2017 Simon Kenny, a 60 year old solicitor and Deputy District Judge, along with his...
View ArticleWomen jailed for sex attack on footballer
Introduction We sometimes get asked to look at cases that are in the news, and our attention was drawn to the case of Brogan Gillard and her two friends on 27th January 2017. She was jailed for 31...
View ArticleRolf Harris cleared of 3 further charges, jury hung on 4
We looked last year at the new charges faced by Rolf Harris (it seems that in the modern age in cases such as this the Courts have accepted that everyone will know about the previous convictions). He...
View ArticleFranky Mills gets 2 years for cat killing spree
Introduction 17th February 2017 is World Cat Day (if you don’t know what this is, search #WorldCatDay on twitter – there are a lot of cats). And in one small corner of England, the felines had their...
View ArticleAdam Johnson loses renewed application to appeal conviction and sentence
Introduction and Background The case of Adam Johnson, the former Sunderland footballer, has generated a lot of interest (see here for some previous coverage and links). Sentenced to 6 years last year,...
View ArticleJonathan Walsh – paediatrician jailed for having indecent images of children
Introduction Any story of a doctor who is caught abusing the trust placed in him is bound to attract the attention of the public. And so Dr Jonathan Walsh, a paediatrician, was bound to get in the news...
View ArticleJulie Higgins – Fake Doctor spared jail, to the irritation of the Judge …
Introduction On 27th March 2017 Julie Higgins appeared for sentence at Bournemouth Crown Court for offences of pretending to be a doctor. That sounds a pretty serious offence and the fact (more on that...
View ArticleMark Sands jailed for threatening to kill his MP
Introduction and Facts We have covered a fair amount of social media prosecutions (see here, et al), some on different sides of the line of what should probably be criminal in a modern society. Since...
View ArticleTwo jailed for halal turkey fraud
Introduction and Facts Many religions, including Islam, have dietary rules. Many muslims adhere to rules that require meat to be halal, and there are various bodies that can certify that food as being...
View Article95 year old ‘spared jail’ for Attempted Murder
Introduction We have looked on many occasions at the question of prosecuting and sentencing the elderly. The most recent development was when the Court of Appeal heard (and dismissed) the appeals of...
View ArticleAshley Charles – High Court refuses further appeal
We have looked previously at the case of Ashley Charles – the both when he was convicted of murder, and when his appeal against conviction and 14 year tariff was dismissed in December 2013. It’s fair...
View ArticleRolf Harris cleared at re-trial
We had a quick look earlier this when Rolf Harris was acquitted of 3 charges of 7 historical sexual offences, with the jury being unable to agree on the remaining 4. The full details of the accusations...
View ArticleIan Paterson – surgeon gets 15 years for unnecessary operations on 10 people
Introduction It was always bound to be a high profile case, as well as a puzzling one. Dr Ian Paterson was someone held in high regard – a doctor and, by his mid 30s, a consultant General Surgeon. In...
View ArticleGayle Newland convicted at re-trial
Introduction The question of consent in relation to sexual interactions between people can throw up some incredibly complicated questions, one being question of when somebody tells lies about...
View ArticleDavid Harris – TV Producer jailed for trying to hire hitmen to kill his partner
Introduction and Facts David Harris is a 68 year old retired TV Producer who is starting (as of 14th July 2017) a 17 year sentence following his conviction on three counts of soliciting the murder of...
View ArticleViscount St Davids jailed for threatening and racist Facebook posts
Introduction The development of the internet, and social media in particular, had lead to a revolution in the criminal law in many ways. One is that it has greatly increased the number of ways in which...
View ArticleGayle Newland –‘I was pretending to be a boy for a variety of reasons’
We have looked before at the case of Gayle Newland, who is up for sentence on 20th July 2017 (next Thursday) following her conviction at a re-trial of various sexual offences where she (to cut a very...
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