Lincoln House Chambers

Business Crime & Financial RegulationCriminal LawProfessional DisciplineRegulatory

OVERVIEW

Joe came to the Bar in 1993 having originally been a Branch Crown Prosecutor and national Head of Strategy with the CPS.  He has also been a lecturer at Chester Law College.

He has a large criminal practice that incorporates all areas of criminal law including fraud, murder, manslaughter, drugs, violence and sex cases.  Joe is also regularly instructed in regulatory cases involving the Police.

Joe has experience tackling a wide-range of intriguing and serious cases. He has been involved in a number of complex, high- profile trials, both defending and prosecuting.

He continues to present seminars and lecture on regulatory and criminal topics to a wide variety of professional audiences.

Notable cases

Successfully defending a 90-year old who had slashed his neighbour`s throat with a carving knife.

R v Pitt and Others – “Pitt-Bull” case – gang-related Murder and Drugs Conspiracies

RSPCA-instigated investigation into poisoning raptors in North Yorkshire grouse moors

R v Ward – Defendant extradited from Ireland to face inciting death by dangerous driving by employee in Manchester

Prosecuting in the “baby-swapping” case where the parents of twins were alleged to have swapped their twins before one of them died.

Prosecuting a matriarch in Blackburn who arranged for her nieces to be brought from Pakistan to go through arranged marriages with her sons and then enslaved in her household.

R v Adetoro and Others – Rochdale “drive-by” shootings

R v Bibi – “Enslavement” of daughters-in-law tricked to travel to England from Pakistan for arranged marriages

R v Gregory – Baby-battering in Burnley

R v Richards – Alleged protection racket targeting commercial premises in Salford

Firearms/Armed Robbery

R v Pequici – Albanian defendant with hidden cache of revolvers in Wigan

R v Burton – Armed robbery in Nantwich

R v Barton – Conspiracy to commit armed robbery in Blackburn

R v Newell – Armed robbery in Warrington R v Vanden – Series of armed robberies in the North West

R v Phythian – GBH, aggravated burglary and armed robbery in North Wales and Queensferry

R v Ratcliffe – Armed robbery in Salford

Fraud

R v Chadwick and Others – Operation Pickawick – “diversion” Fraud

R v Brooks & Others – Five-month “smuggling” Fraud

R v Burns & Others – Two-month “high-yield investment Fraud

R v Fernihough – Large-scale VAT fraud at Winchester Crown Court

R v Ellison – Fraud by health centre practice manager in Rochdale

Sexual Offences

Rochdale child abuse case in Liverpool

R v Arthur Thompson – Multiple historical sex-abuse

R v Dineley – 30 year-old rape of sister

R v Kane – Rape recorded on victim’s mobile phone

R v Close – Serious sexual assaults on step-daughter while in Majorca

Prosecuting a long-running case in Preston where a gang of East Europeans were responsible for snatching a young girl off the street in Slovakia, trafficking her into England where she was raped and imprisoned before being sold to an illegal immigrant and made to go through a “sham marriage” in Burnley

R v Baig and Ditta – sexual assault and false imprisonment by mature defendants preying on teenage girls in Stockport.

Called 1993; lecturer in law, College of Law, Chester; CPS branch Crown prosecutor and head of field operations, CPS HQ; regular lecturer to law firms, law societies, police etc, on topics relating to criminal law and human rights.

Criminal Bar Association

Loretto School, Musselburgh St John's College, Cambridge “Late Exhibitioner”

Football, golf, tennis, squash, sailing, skiing.