Catherine Silverton

Criminal & Regulatory & Public

Crime

Catherine Silverton prosecutes or defends, primarily in serious and high-profile crime cases in the Crown Court, including serious sexual offences, homicide and cases involving children. She has a detailed working knowledge of the complex legislation and sentencing guidelines, current and past, relating to these types of offences.

Catherine is an accomplished advocate with 17 years’ experience of prosecuting or defending in jury trials. She understands the delicate balance required to robustly cross-examine while dealing with intimate or traumatic evidence, and is skilled at clearly and sensitively presenting complex or distressing material to a jury. She has made many successful applications to dismiss and submissions of no case to answer, resulting in juries being directed to acquit. She has significant experience of presenting complex legal arguments on behalf of the Crown and the defence.

Catherine is trained in cross examining vulnerable witnesses and has significant experience in s28 cases. She is a qualified advocacy trainer.

Catherine specialises in serious sexual and violent offences, including rape and historical offences and cases involving child victims or defendants. She is highly experienced in dealing with allegations of violence (including against babies and children), the use of firearms, arson with intent, homicide and sexual violence.

Catherine is adept at interpreting medical evidence and has experience of cross-examining a very wide range of medical experts. She has considerable experience of cross-examining forensic experts including scientists and cell-site analysts.

Catherine is regularly instructed to prosecute or defend in complex conspiracies. She has recently defended in conspiracies to commit murder, s.18, fraud, money-laundering, drugs offences and robbery.

Catherine also is trained in forensic accountancy and is experienced in dealing with complex financial cases, large-scale money-laundering and frauds and cases involving POCA.

Regulatory & Public

Catherine's background is generally crime, much of which involved the prosecution or defence of financial offences, and has experience in a multitude of regulatory and disciplinary areas.

She has been involved in cases brought by many specialist prosecuting authorities, including the Department for Trade and Industry (now BIS), HMRC, the Food Standards Agency, the Environment Agency and the Child Support Agency. She has prosecuted on behalf of the Department of Work and Pensions since 2002, both as sole counsel and as junior.

Catherine has appeared as a leading junior in a complex and wide-reaching case involving breach of VOSA regulations alongside other offences of fraud.

In early 2014, she was involved in a multi-handed large-scale fraud prosecuted by the Trading Standards Agency.

Catherine has had involvement with the Police Federation in her capacity defending a serving police officer from the Metropolitan Police Service for offences of grooming and indecent assault.

Catherine also has experience of appearing at the Coroner’s Court.

1999University of Newcastle, BA (Hons) English Literature (2:1)

2000College of Law, York, PGDip Law

2001College of Law, Chancery Lane, BVC (‘very competent’)