Mark Robinson, instructed by National Legal Service, secures an acquittal for his client charged with three counts of possession with intent to supply at the Central Criminal Court sitting at Monument Nightingale Court.
The defendant’s home was raided by the police after an intelligence led operation, where a modest amount of cocaine, crack cocaine and heroin were found in his bedroom. Four mobile phones, two of which were burner phones, £1900 inside a shoe box and a ledger containing information of £3000 worth of debt linked to the supply of drugs was also discovered in the bedroom during the raid. In interview, the defendant refused to provide his pins for the phones and could not provide an account for the ledger but maintained that he was an addict, and the drugs were for his own personal use.
During the cross examination of a police expert witness and the officer in charge of the case, evidence was adduced that pins were not necessary to download burner phones. It was also adduced that the police lost the original copy of the ledger, so they were unable undertake forensic analysis of the defendant’s fingerprints and DNA. The police also failed to request a sample of the defendant’s handwriting for analysis by an expert. Mark submitted that these failings deprived the defendant of an opportunity of establishing his innocence, further, the burden of proof was on the prosecution to prove its case, which they were unable to do.
The jury returned a unanimous not guilty verdict in under an hour. The defendant was sentenced to a £250 fine for possession of the drugs.
Mark’s full profile: https://greatjames.co.uk/members/mark-robinson/