Old Bailey Jury Recommend Leniency
January 20, 2017
A jury today returned a verdict of guilty in the trial of a young man charged with the killing of an acquaintance outside a party in East London last year. Oliver Saxby QC was defending, leading Sara Haroon of Bond Joseph Solicitors.
The incident was captured on CCTV and the jury rejected the defence of self-defence. But having done so they took the very unusual step of, in open court, expressing a ‘recommendation for leniency’ given the circumstances of the case. The defendant had stabbed the deceased twice with a large kitchen knife but in detailed cross-examination a number of prosecution witnesses had accepted that their original accounts to the police had been wrong in a number of material respects including, notably, on the question of the deceased’s character and whether he might have been armed himself with a knife on the evening in question.
Sentence was adjourned until Wednesday.
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