Alice Holloway, instructed by Caroline Liggins of Hodge, Jones and Allen Solicitors, secured the acquittal of her vulnerable youth client charged with six counts of being concerned in the supply of class A drugs, possession with intent to supply class A drugs, possession of criminal property and modern slavery relating to another vulnerable youth.
The defendant was charged with the offences after police attributed two drugs line phones to him and made an arrest of the defendant and another in a ‘trap’ house. The defendant was said to have been involved in the supply of class A drugs for months preceding the arrest and was claimed to have been in possession of the large quantity of class A drugs found within the ‘trap’ house. It was also said that the defendant had forced another young person into modern slavery by directing them to complete drug sales and booking taxis for this purpose.
The defence raised was a complex amalgamation of factual denial and s45 Modern Slavery Act 2015. Prosecution failings over one year of case progression meant that defence disclosure requests were not actioned until one week before trial when Alice made a successful section 8 CPIA disclosure application. Hundreds of pages of cell site and raw phone material were disclosed just four days before trial.
On the day of trial, Alice made comprehensive submissions suggesting there had been an abuse of process in this case and the only possible remedy was to exclude all material relating to the mobile phones and their attribution to the defendant under section 78 PACE. The prosecution opposed this, suggesting that it was in fact the defence who had failed to properly outline the issues in the case.
The learned District Judge acceded to Alice’s submissions, ruling that the Prosecution had complied with their obligations ‘far too late’, meaning that the defence could not answer the Crown’s evidence. The Judge announced that Alice’s defence statement was ‘very clear’ and the disclosure requests had been made repeatedly in a timely manner. The Judge excluded all evidence relating to the mobile phones and their attribution to the defendant.
The Crown could no longer prove their case and offered no evidence on all charges. This brought to an end over a year’s proceedings for a vulnerable defendant who had been identified as a victim of modern slavery.”
