Cases

An 87 year old cab driver was violently assaulted and knocked to the ground by the defendant who then stole his taxi. The defendant did a three point turn and ran over the victim as he lay prone in the road. He later burnt out the car in an alley behind his house and claimed to have no memory of the incident due to alcohol. Stephen Vullo conducted the cross-examination of the experts giving evidence as to alcohol back calculation and the effects of alcohol on the ability to form intent and the memory.

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).

Leading counsel in the trial and retrial. The client opted to remain in custody for an additional 6 months to wait for a date when Stephen was available. The Crown’s case was that the murder was a drugs killing. It involved the challenging of DNA, call data, cell site, fibres and blood splatter evidence.

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 charged with attempted murder and possession of a firearm. The Crown’s case was that the defendant had gone to a rival’s property where drugs were stored with the intention of stealing them. During the robbery one of the occupants of the premises was shot in the head but survived. The defendant did not deny being at the address during that night but maintained he knew nothing of the shooting and that it must have happened minutes after he had left. The crown relied on an expert in cell site analysis who had concluded that the defendant’s mobile telephone was at the scene of the shooting at the exact time. After detailed and lengthy cross examination of the expert it was shown that in fact the opposite was true and the defendant’s telephone (along with the defendant) had left the scene approximately 6 minutes before the shooting occurred . The defendant was acquitted.

This case involved a double attempted murder following a shooting outside a nightclub in Bolton. The offence dated back to 2000 as the defendant was only arrested after being detained following the shooting of a police woman during a bungled raid of a Public House.

The defendant was charged with the possession of a firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence. He had been chased across a well know London Park by police officers who gave evidence that they saw the defendant discard the item that was later found to be a loaded handgun in a sock. The case involved intricate analysis of gunshot shot residue (GSR) expert evidence, fibre evidence and DNA. The defendant was acquitted but has since been charged with murder where the same gun had been discharged two weeks earlier during a home invasion/revenge killing.

Acted in the 21st July bombers appeal before the Court of Appeal (he was not the original trial counsel). The appeal was heard over 2 days. Stephen Vullo identified that the Police, Crown and all involved in the trial had incorrectly proceeded on the basis that senior police officers had acted in accordance with the codes of practice when denying Omar, the Warren Street bomber, access to a solicitor to allow ‘emergency safety interviews to be conducted’. In rejecting the appeal the Court had to concede that there was a breach of the codes. The Court held that the subsequent use by the Crown of the comments made in those interviews even though made in the absence of a solicitor coupled with the police administering the incorrect (new style) caution did not render the conviction unsafe. This matter is now pending appeal in the ECJ.

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.