Lincoln House Chambers

Joe is an experienced and tenacious advocate, with a track record of excellence in dealing with cases of particular difficulty, whether because of the vulnerabilities of the witnesses, defendants or complainants involved, or the high level of complexity.

Joe is a Category 4 prosecutor and a member of the CPS Serious Crime Group, and Counter-Terrorism specialist advocate panels, and has a high level of expertise in all aspects of serious and complex crime, particularly where there is an international dimension. Joe has extensive experience of prosecuting organised crime and offences which involve the professional exploitation of human beings. In recent years Joe has prosecuted some of the largest “county lines” conspiracies in the region, including those involving the trafficking of young people, and large-scale drug supply conspiracies organised and directed by serving prisoners. Joe now regularly leads in such cases.

Joe served on behalf of HM Government as the Criminal Justice Advisor to the Kingdom of Bahrain, and Liaison Prosecutor in the United Arab Emirates, and was based in the British Embassy in Manama. He also worked with senior prosecutors and British missions in a number of other Middle-Eastern countries. He is often invited to participate in training overseas prosecutors, judges and law enforcement professionals. In recent years Joe has acted as a subject matter expert for the UN Office for Drugs and Crime, Office for Counter-Terrorism, on the subject of terrorist finance, in Ulaanbaatar, and on prosecuting serious crime, in Karachi and Hyderabad, Pakistan.

Within the field of counter-terrorism, Joe has extensive experience in dealing with offences involving extreme right-wing ideology, including offences under the Terrorism Act, and those involving the propagation of racial or religious hatred. Joe has prosecuted a number of offences linked to organised antisemitism and hostility towards Muslims. Joe has a strong working knowledge of the mindset and the modus operandi of the far right and is particularly familiar with the more subtle tropes of antisemitism. Joe has prosecuted youths under the Terrorism Acts as well as individuals with significant psychiatric and other mental health issues. Joe served as a mobilised reservist in an infantry role in Iraq and has a strong working knowledge of firearms, component parts and ammunition.

Joe is a member of the CPS Rape and Serious Sexual Offending advocate panel. Joe has devoted a significant part of his career to cases of this kind and has particular expertise in respect of historic sexual offending and sexual offences against vulnerable people. Joe is known for his sound advice on, and rigorous approach to third party and digitally stored material. Joe has prosecuted trials involving multiple-victim rape cases, and a case in which a victim of rape was murdered by her partner shortly after giving her ABE interview and before any proceedings had commenced against him. Joe enjoys a reputation for dealing sensitively and communicating in a manner appropriate to the needs of vulnerable victims, witnesses, and defendants. Joe makes time for this important interaction, whatever the demands of the case.

Joe has a growing defence practice and particularly welcomes instructions in cases involving vulnerable or mentally disordered defendants, and those who may have been the victims of trafficking. Joe recently persuaded the Crown through formal submissions, to offer no evidence in a case involving an individual holding views aligned to the “Freeman on the land” belief system. Joe also recently secured a key reduction in sentence in the Court of Appeal Criminal Division for an individual whose treatment amounted to exploitation short of the defence under Section 45, in a case where the court emphasised the need for adequate detail in sentencing remarks (Ardit Saffa [2021] EWCA Crim 661; [2021] 4 WLUK 440).

Joe is a pupil supervisor and recently supervised a senior officer in the Royal Navy during her time with chambers on her way to becoming a barrister in the Royal Naval Legal Service.

NOTABLE CASES

Organised Crime, Human Trafficking and “County Lines”

Operation Highgate (leading, prosecuting): Ongoing

Operation Quebec 2 (leading, prosecuting): Ongoing

Operation Enigma (led, prosecuting): 40-defendant conspiracy to supply heroin and cocaine in Blackpool, organised from HMP Lancaster Farms

Operation Whippet (led, prosecuting): Conspiracy to produce cannabis on a commercial scale, and firearms offences, together with exploitation of illegal entrants into the United Kingdom by an organised criminal group, and related Immigration Act offences.

Operation Ullswater (led, prosecuting): 24-defendant human trafficking and “county line” conspiracy to supply heroin and crack cocaine from Yorkshire into the Lancashire coast, using exploited teenage couriers.

Operation Mallard (led, prosecuting): 13-defendant “county-line” conspiracy to supply heroin and cocaine from Manchester into the Lancashire coast, involving cuckooing of properties tenanted by vulnerable individuals.

Counter-Terrorism Division

Operation Leaderess (sole counsel, prosecuting): Ongoing case involving alleged offences under the Terrorism Acts.

Operation Reslate (QC led, prosecuting): Ongoing case involving allegations of attempted murder in a terrorist context.

Operation Quickenbeam (sole counsel, prosecuting): Ongoing case involving alleged offences under the Terrorism Acts, and alleged offences involving stirring up racial hatred.

Operation Bobbybush (sole counsel, prosecuting): Case concerning multiple offences of glorifying terrorism and stirring up racial and religious hatred, concerning the defendant using the Gab platform to share material promoting homophobia, and lethal violence against people of “non-white” ethnicities, in particular the Muslim and Jewish communities. The material notably included the headcam footage of the Christchurch mass murders, being disseminated as a tool of extreme right-wing propaganda. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-61043995#:~:text=A%20neo%2DNazi%20who %20encouraged,%22I%20am%20a%20Nazi.%22

Operation Budgeter (sole counsel, prosecuting): Youth case involving Terrorism Act offences connected with the extreme right-wing and violent racist and antisemitic mindset, in the context of a young person with autistic spectrum disorder.

Operation Shadowist (sole counsel, prosecuting): Case concerning one of the United Kingdom’s most prolific antisemitic video streamers, who ran Youtube and Bitchute “channels” devoted to propagating antisemitic smears such as the blood-libel, holocaust denial and mockery of its victims, and endorsing violence against the Jewish community. Multiple offences of stirring up racial hatred.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-59525076

Operation Nichelino (sole counsel, prosecuting): Case connected with the exposure by the Bellingcat group of the Ironmarch extreme right-wing forum, which involved a Cambridge graduate with autism spectrum disorder communicating with founder members of National Action, voluminous evidence of racist, homophobic, antisemitic and misogynist/Incel mindset and affiliations, and an offence of collecting information contrary to Section 58 of the Terrorism Act.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-59525076

Subsequent appearance for the respondent as sole counsel against Queen’s Counsel for the appellant in the CACD, in an appeal concerning the relationship between the sentencing guidelines for mentally disordered defendants and offences under the Terrorism Acts, and the relationship between sentences for offenders of particular concern and the suspended sentence provisions of the Sentencing Act 2020, [2021] EWCA Crim 1461; [2021] 8 WLUK 288.

Operation Princehood (sole counsel, prosecuting): Case concerning a former Cambridge University research fellow sending a powder substance to the parliamentary address of the Prime Minister together with politically charged material, prosecuted under Section S.114 of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 following an investigated by SO15, Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/theresa-may-poison-scientist-christopher-doyle-cambridge-a9706316.html;

Rape and Sexual Offending

R v GC (sole counsel, prosecuting): Multiple rape offences by the defendant in the context of a controlling relationship and multiple retractions.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/man-25-raped -sobbing-vulnerable-21529090

R v MV (QC led, prosecuting): Rape and murder case, where the victim disclosed multiple rapes by her partner in the context of an abusive relationship and was then murdered by him after he was made subject to no further action by the police.

R v C and G (sole counsel, prosecuting): Historic penetrative sexual abuse by step-father on step-daughter as a very young child, and identical allegation against his brother, in circumstances where both defendants cross-alleged each against the other, historic sexual abuse against children, as evidence of bad character. This case involved detailed analysis of large quantities of very old third-party records to establish the true position. A Youth Court Case (prosecuting): Multiple rape allegations tried in the Youth Court concerning teenagers from the cadet forces, in which screens, live-link, meeting between the complainant and, judge and defence counsel were deployed as a combination of special measures to enable a highly vulnerable victim to give evidence.

R v PM (sole counsel, prosecuting): Historic penetrative sexual abuse by father on biological daughter post-2004, together with extensive penetrative sexual abuse against the defendant’s 12-year old daughter-in-law in the 1980s. The defendant was elderly at the time of trial and suffered from multiple severe disabilities.

R v KS (sole counsel, prosecuting): Rape committed against a sleeping intoxicated victim in one part of the country, then subsequently rape against a victim who had consumed alcohol and drugs in another area, whilst on bail for the initial offence. Significant volume of CCTV, bodycam and digital material, and media interest. (Sentenced to 22 years with 3 years extended licence after trial).

R v LI (sole counsel, prosecuting): Complaint against step-father of historic penetrative sexual abuse, in circumstances where a similar allegation against his brother, which was contained in the same ABE interview, had already been made the subject of no further action by a second police force on evidential grounds. Vulnerable complainant with multiple difficulties.

R v AL (sole counsel, prosecuting): Historic child sexual abuse spanning conduct both within the United Kingdom and in Spain. Defendant extradited pursuant to a European Arrest Warrant after seven years, during which time the original ABE interview was destroyed. Cross-examined in the absence of a police interview of any kind, consequent to his having been extradited.

R v SB (sole counsel, prosecuting): Grooming and sexual abuse of multiple child victims, all of whom had challenging backgrounds and presented significant third-party disclosure complications.

Operation Rasheen (sole counsel, prosecuting): Stranger rape on a child with learning difficulties and multiple other disabilities, investigated by the Force Major Investigations Team, involving significant public appeal, and national media interest.

R v MT (sole counsel, prosecuting): Rape of a male victim following the consumption by the victim of alcohol and drugs, and issues of “drunken consent”..

Violence and Homicide

Operation Berbice (QC led, prosecuting): Conspiracy to murder and soliciting murder arising from a failed contract killing and subsequent attempt by the principal defendant to arrange for the victim to be murdered from his cell whilst on remand for the conspiracy. Three of the five defendants were handed life sentences.

Operation Moorhen (QC led, prosecuting): Manslaughter case involving the defendant’s premature baby, where the defendant had previously been made subject to no further action, and where family proceedings in the High Court led to the re-consideration of complex neuropathology, osteo-articular pathology, an IPCC investigation, and a reversal of the earlier decision. The case involved conflicting advanced evidence on the subject of peri-mortem bleeding into bone fractures, a large volume of disclosure from proceedings in the High Court, and sensitive covertly recorded material ultimately being disclosed and received in the criminal trial.

R v KV (sole counsel, prosecuting): Case concerning mistreatment of dementia patients by a care worker in the context of a care home. Significant disclosure of third-party records and successful bad character application framed around disciplinary records.

Operation Phoebe (sole counsel, prosecuting): 24-defendant violent disorder concerning organised football hooligan activity linked to the “Burnley Suicide Squad”, comprising a single case management hearing for all defendants, three trials, and a sentencing exercise lasting a week, at the conclusion of which 21 defendants were made subject to football banning orders, 20 of whom received custodial sentences.

Police Misconduct

R v Michael Martin (led, prosecuting): Multiple counts of fraud and misconduct by a serving Merseyside police superintendent, with subsequent confiscation proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 conducted as sole counsel.

Call to the bar: 2006