3TG Barristers

 James is a criminal law specialist, undertaking both defence and prosecution work. He has experience in a wide variety of areas of the criminal law, including serious violence, sexual offences, high-value thefts and robberies, fraud and drugs.

He also has particular experience in confiscation and asset forfeiture, prosecuting or defending cases involving millions of pounds, in benefit fraud cases, and in road traffic and railway offences where he is regularly instructed on a privately funded basis.

Notable Cases: Court of Appeal

R -v- K(P) [2015] EWCA Crim 648: An appeal against a sentence imposed on a man who in the 1970s had abused all of his young siblings which he too had been under 18. The Court, taking into account the fact that the appellant had been a victim of similar abuse by his father, had pleaded guilty at the first opportunity and had even confessed to abusing his sister before she had made a complaint, reduced his sentence from 7 years to 3 1/2.

Attorney-General's Reference (Nos. 45 and 46 of 2012) [2012] EWCA Crim 2704: Responding to a challenge by the prosecution, represented by a Silk, to a sentence of 2 years imprisonment imposed on my client who had been involved in an armed robbery of a golf club where the manager had been threatened with serious violence, then bound and gagged.

R -v- Chambers [2009] EWCA Crim 2742: An appeal, acting without a leader, against conviction and sentence. The appellant had been convicted of conspiring to supply the largest quantities of amphetamine and counterfeit Ecstasy ever seized in the UK and had received a sentence of 18 years' imprisonment. Legal argument dwelt on topics including the state of mind required in proving conspiracies where the substantive offence cannot be committed, and the nature of conspiracies in which one 'conspirator' must have mislead another. The judgment by Aiken LJ concluded by saying: "We are extremely grateful to Mr Wing for his very able and helpful written and oral submissions".

R -v- Burnett [2008] EWCA Crim 2949: Responding , as a led junior, to an appeal against conviction made on the basis that the discovery, months after the trial, that two crucial police witnesses had been suspended from service for gross corruption rendered the convictions for a series of armed robberies unsafe.

R -v- Riley [2008] EWCA Crim 3231: Responding to an appeal against sentence made by a Q.C. in relation to a man who stabbed someone to death in an argument over drugs.

R-v-Nwangoro [2006] EWCA Crim 3061: Acted as junior counsel for the respondent in an appeal relating to a confiscation order in the sum of £240,000, which required detailed arguments on the 9 grounds of appeal, including breach of legitimate expectation, the calculation of benefit and realisable assets, the interpretation of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, the court’s jurisdiction and the approach to be taken when the correct procedure in the Crown Court had not been followed.

Crown Court Serious Violence:

R -v- W: Led by Adam Davis QC defending a man accused, with his brother, of murdering a man in the street in an entirely unprovoked attack, punching, kicking and stamping on the unconscious victim.

R -v- F: Acting for a defendant accused of a violent gunpoint robbery which led to the alleged victim suffering two broken legs. The case against the defendant was thrown out following a full day's legal argument at the start of the trial.

R -v- Sweeney: Trial concerning allegations of a violent robbery as a result of which the complainant suffered multiple fractures to his face. This defendant had previously pleaded guilty when represented by someone else but then wished to change his plea back to not guilty, alleging that his former barrister, an extremely experienced advocate, had failed to advise him properly then forced him to plead guilty. The judge granted the application after a full hearing before the trial.

R-v-Shepherd: Prosecuting a sophisticated armed robbery of a supermarket, and two attempts to pervert the course of justice. The defendant had made his way into a branch of the Co Op before it opened in the morning then forced the staff at gunpoint to open the safes and to disable the CCTV systems. He then made his victims get into the meat chiller room, dragging one by her hair when she refused, and locked the door. The police were arriving as he left but they fled when he threatened to shoot them.

Sexual Offences:

R -v- Ryan: Defending a man accused of serially raping his daughter for years when she was between the ages of 7 and 15, while physically abusing her, her siblings and mother. He had a child with a 15 year old girl around the same time, and was said to have sexually attacked a school friend of the complainant. In an earlier trial, with different representation, he had been convicted of abusing a step daughter in a similar way within months of leaving his original family. Sentenced, on this case alone, to a sentence equivalent to 21 years' imprisonment.

R -v- M: Defending a woman accused of historical sex offences: forcing two of her brothers have sex with her when she was 15 and they were 7 and 9, and assisting her older brother to rape another younger sister; this older brother also raped the defendant whilst several of the children engaged in other incestuous activities. The father had attempted to rape the Defendant and encouraged some of his friends to molest two of his younger daughters. By the time of the trial, one of the younger sisters had accused the Defendant's partner of rape as well.

Drugs and Organised Crime:

R -v- H: Instructed to defend a man allegedly involved in a conspiracy to supply 198kg of cocaine, which had a street value of £50,000,000.

R -v- Hoskins: Prosecuting a man who was found in possession of three firearms, two of which were loaded, and possession of £15,000 worth of heroin and crack with intent to supply. The defendant was represented at trial by a Q.C.

R-v-Chambers and others: Led junior defending a man accused of conspiring to supply the largest amount of amphetamine (500kg) and counterfeit Ecstasy tablets (400,000) ever seized in the UK. I later represented the same defendant without a leader in his confiscation proceedings - the hearing took several days and involved millions of pounds - and two cases in the Court of Appeal.

R-v-Subashi: Defending 13 allegations against one of a safe-cracking gang who targeted a number of high street restaurant chains, using extremely sophisticated techniques to disable the alarms and plasma cutters to break open the safes.

Fraud:

R -v- Ursachi: Instructed to prosecute a man who acted as the hub of an international distribution network of 50,000 cloned credit cards, in a conspiracy worth potentially millions of pounds.

R -v- DJ: Defence junior for the trial of a man accused of defrauding his employers of £250,000 by creating extremely sophisticated financial instruments through which he would resell machinery and make non-existent financial settlements with third parties, then creating an intricate trail of forged documents to cover his tracks.

R -v- S: Prosecuting a man who pleaded guilty to a £250,000 fraud on his employers, which he had committed over the course of years while creating reams of false invoices to hide his offending.

Other Cases:

R -v- T and L: Court martial in Germany in which two men were accused of outraging public decency and assault respectively, which offences led to a full-blown riot. L's case was thrown out at the end of the prosecution case but T was convicted, wholly against the weight of the evidence. The Courts Martial Appeals Court granted the appeal against conviction ([2010] EWCA Crim 1338).

R -v- S: Parole hearing for a lifer who had murdered a 72-year-old woman when 15 years old. The judge ordered his immediate release after finding that the Probation Service had neither given reliable testimony nor treated the applicant fairly.

A -v- A: Civil case in the county court regarding a contested application for an injunction between two millionaires whose marriage had fallen apart spectacularly badly.

Lincoln's Inn Criminal Bar Association

BA (First Class) St John's College, Oxford CPE - City University, London Bar School - Inns of Court School of Law