Chris Bertham successfully represents client charged with Attempted Murder

Chris Bertham successfully represented Miss V., who was charged with attempted murder. 

She was accused of stabbing the complainant multiple times (to the head, neck and back) with a large pair of scissors, which caused him to collapse on his back. It was then asserted that she’d said ‘I’m sorry it had to be you’ whilst straddling him and moving to push a jumper over his face to suffocate him, intending to kill him.

Originally, she had been advised by her previous solicitors to plead guilty to s.18 wounding with intent, which she duly did. 

The case eventually came to Chris as a late return. Following instructions given, which were inconsistent with the guilty plea advanced, Chris successfully applied to vacate her plea of guilty and then ran the trial with the defence of no intent to kill or cause serious harm and that force was only used in the prevention of crime / self-defence, due to false imprisonment by the complainant. 

The representation order was transferred to Newgate Solicitors only after the application to vacate her plea was successful.

At the conclusion of the trial, the jury acquitted her of both attempted murder and s.18 wounding with intent, unanimously. They convicted her of s.20 wounding in the alternative, seemingly due to excessive force in her use of a weapon in a sustained attack. 

Had she been convicted of the attempted murder with a weapon, she would have faced a starting point of 25 years’ imprisonment, but due to her conviction on s.20 wounding only and the mitigation available to her, she was instead sentenced to a Community Order with a mental health treatment requirement.

Chris was instructed during the trial by Newgate Solicitors: info@newgatesolicitors.com