Stephen Akinsanya, leading Will Paynter, secured an acquittal for their client following a successful submission of no case to answer on all four counts including firearms offences at the Central Criminal Court.
They were instructed by Charles Worthington and Whitney Dixon of Lansbury Worthington.
Their client, the first defendant in a four defendant trial, was the driver of a car. The defendant parked his car, a male got out of it, went 500m to where a post-carnival street party was ongoing, and discharged 3 shots, with the middle discharge hitting the ground and injuring the alleged target with ricochet injuries. The gunman then returned to the car.
The defendant maintained he was merely in the area driving people around and socialising and had no idea that this male would do what he did or indeed was aware of what had happened until he was arrested.
Two other occupants of the car were also on trial alleged to be the spotter and the armourer. The male on trial as the shooter denied he was the shooter and said he was nearby with his partner.
In the trial Mr Akinsanya was able to demonstrate severe deficiencies in terms of the investigation – particularly through detailed forensic cross-examination of the officer in charge of the case. He highlighted failures that that demonstrated the client’s account, which had been asserted in carefully drafted defence statements, had not been properly considered by the police and prosecution. He skilfully used cctv to underline these points.
Mr Paynter also cross-examined the Crown’s cell-site expert to ensure that the limitations of cell site were apparent to the Jury and so that a seemingly incriminating cell-siting could be disregarded as a network anomaly.
The defence had also instructed a variety of experts including those specialising in cell-site, handset data as well as Mr Dyson – a leading firearms expert.
The level of challenge to the prosecution case was such, that after persuasive submissions by Mr Akinsanya and the co-defending counsel, the Judge was compelled to conclude that there was no case to answer and order led that the Jury return not guilty verdicts.
