Christopher Sallon QC

Christopher Sallon, Queen's Counsel, specialises in high-profile, general crime, with emphasis on fraud, cases which involve medicine and forensic science and regulatory work. He has also acted as a specialist adviser to parliamentary committees and other organizations.

He is included in Legal 500 and a recommended specialist fraud and general crime practitioner in Chambers Guide. In 2007 he successfully represented Shaun Lynch, who was charged with Kieren Fallon and other jockeys in a conspiracy to defraud Betfair. He acted for Graham Coutts who was retried for murder after a successful appeal to the House of Lords). He also defended Siôn Jenkins, a former deputy headmaster, who was charged with the murder of his foster daughter, Billie-Jo. The two retrials which took place at the Old Bailey involved multi-disciplinary and complex scientific and medical evidence. The experts called on each side included forensic, pulmonary and oral pathologists, neurosurgeons, radiologists, professors of anaesthesia, respiratory medicine, fluid mechanics and climate control.

In 2006 he was appointed Specialist Adviser to the Public Administration Select Committee of the House of Commons in relation to their Enquiry into Propriety and Honours, and his written Advice in relation to the reforming the law in relation to corruption is annexed to the Committee's Second Report 2007-8. He has also been appointed Counsel to the Constitutional Affairs Committee's Enquiry into Party Funding.

He recently represented the Forensic Science Service in relation to the Independent Home Office Review into forensic work carried out during the investigation into the death of Damilola Taylor. . He currently represents the Government of Trinidad in the prosecution of a former minister for corruption.
Other cases in which he has acted include R v Foxley, the former MOD official charged with corruption; R v Turpin, a captain in the SAS accused of spying in the first criminal case of industrial espionage to be tried in England; R v Coulton, a police officer in the Royal Protection Squad accused of murdering his wife; R v Fisher, a defendant in the Jubilee Line fraud. He also practises in the appellate courts including the Privy Council and the House of Lords where, in 1997, he appeared for Philip English in a landmark case which redefined the doctrine of joint enterprise in murder.

In November 2007 he delivered a keynote address at the Annual Bond Solon Expert Witness Conference. He is a member of the Association of Regulatory and Disciplinary Lawyers and April 2008, will address the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners Stakeholders' Conference on quality standards for expert witnesses.

He came to the Bar after working for the United Nations in New York. He has lectured at universities throughout the United States, including Yale and Stanford, on trial advocacy and comparative civil liberty issues, and in 2006 he delivered a William Reece Smith Distinguished Lecture at Stetson University, Florida. In 1996 he was the first British QC to be elected as an honorary Fellow of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers. He is also a member of the Bar of the Eastern Caribbean. He was a member of the Bar working party appointed to make submissions into the Guildford and Woolwich Bombings and the Roberts Working Party on Serious Fraud.

Formerly the Bar Council's Chairman of Public Affairs, Christopher Sallon broadcasts on radio and appears on television. He took part in the BBC's three-part series 'Trial by Jury'. He writes regularly, both for the national press and for Counsel magazine, on whose board he sits. He is a member of the board of the National Campaign for the Arts. He sits as a Recorder of the Crown Court. He was appointed a bencher of Gray's Inn in 2002.

last updated January 2008

Year of Call

1973

Year of Silk

1994

Education

Recorder 1996

Languages

French

Email Address

c.sallon@doughtystreet.co.uk

Specialist Teams

Christopher Sallon QC is a member of the following specialist law teams:

• Criminal Law
• Human Rights
• International Law Group
• Regulatory and Financial Crime