conspiracy

The victim was lured to a country lane and shot by a masked gunman with a sten gun. He was in front of his wife and child. The execution was ordered due to a drug related debt. The defendant was one of four defendants and was said to be the getaway driver for his close friend Wayne Collins who was the gunman. The defendant was acquitted after a 3 month trial at the Central Criminal Court. The other 3 defendants were convicted and received life sentences with minimum terms of 33-30 years. The trial involved a wealth of expert evidence from the usual DNA, fingerprints and cell site analysis to the more unusual of a use of a palynology expert (pollen and plant analysis).

The defendant was charged with 4 others with conspiracy to murder. The Crown alleged that the savage attack on the victim by two men with kitchen knives was well planned after significant reconnaissance.

The defendant was accused of planting the Tiger Tiger and Haymarket car bombs the day before breaching security at Glasgow Airport to ram his green Cherokee jeep into the front of Glasgow Airport in an attempt to detonate an improvised explosure device in the rear compartment of the vehicle. Stephen Vullo conducted all cross-examination of the Crown’s numerous explosives experts. The issue was whether the devices were capable of detonation. The defendant claimed they had been manufactured in such a way as to ensure they would not explode. The Crown’s case was that only incompetance prevented the mass murder of hundreds of civilians in both London and Glasgow. The defendant’s assertion of intentional design was rejected but the Judge reduced the sentence he would normally have passed on the basis that he had accepted on hearing cross-examination that the devices were not capable of detonating.

The defendants were charged with kidnap, blackmail, various assaults including sexual assault on a male with one of the defendants charged with rape of the same victim. The trial lasted for just under 2 months and presented a myriad of problems to be overcome. The first was a legal matter relating to whether the complainant could have anonymity in respect of the sexual offences. Expert evidence was served late in relation to the download from a mobile phone on the very contentious issue of whether the defendant had photographed the sexual assault on his mobile phone. At one stage the crown’s expert refused to disclose how he had obtained the material quoting copyright problems with the program he had written. This evidence was eventually excluded after a voir dire

An allegation of kidnap for ransom committed over a 3-day period by a gang of human traffickers attempting to collect an alleged debt owed to them by the owner of a massage parlour.

£53m armed robbery and kidnapping. A seven month trial at the Old Bailey representing one of the armed gang said to have kidnapped the manager of the Securitas Depot in Kent, his wife and 8 year old child. Members of the gang wearing prosthetic disguises and dressed as policemen stopped the manager on his way home from work and took him to a farm where his wife and child were being held having been kidnapped from their home again by members of the gang dressed as policemen. Stephen Vullo conducted all of the very substantial cross-examination in respect of cell site analysis. The Crown’s expert gave evidence for over 2 weeks. He also dealt with all the cross-examination of the forensic scientist on the issue of low copy number (LCN) DNA profiling.

Charged with conspiracy to supply Class A drugs and possession of firearms. The defendant was acquitted after a 9 week trial.