Joseph Middleton

Joe Middleton has been a barrister at Doughty Street since he joined chambers from pupillage in 1998. His early practice covered various areas - housing, employment, education (in particular educational negligence), public law and crime. More recently his practice has focused on immigration and extradition, death penalty work and other human rights challenges. He also has very broad experience as a consultant on elections and election laws in transition democracies.

At university Joe studied Soviet studies and law, including Soviet law, much of his studies and research being devoted to Soviet and Russian criminal and constitutional law. He spent nearly two years studying and conducting research in Moscow and speaks Russian fluently. His articles on constitutional issues have been published in both the UK and Russia.

Joe frequently speaks at seminars and conferences, has been a visiting law lecturer at various universities and has had many published articles. He was founding editor and long-time contributing editor for Russia of European Current Law (Sweet & Maxwell).

Immigration

Joe's immigration practice covers most areas of immigration law, including asylum and human rights appeals, business immigration and nationality law. He is a general editor of the new edition of Jackson, Warr, Onslow-Cole and Middleton- Immigration Law and Practice (2009), for which he co-authored the chapters on the Points Based System. He is also an editor of Butterworths Immigration Law and Practice with a particular focus on human rights cases. His clients have included a former senior executive of Yukos, the Russian oil company, and a former head of government from Southeast Asia.

In the case of A, one of the most important rulings of recent years, the House of Lords held that evidence obtained by torture is inadmissible against appellants in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. In that case Joe acted for Amnesty International and a group of other leading human rights organisations in their intervention supporting the proposition adopted by the House of Lords (A v SSHD [2006] 2 AC 221, [2005] 3 WLR 1249, [2006] 1 All ER 575, [2006] HRLR 6, [2006] UKHRR 225, The Times, 9 December 2005). He also acted for the appellant in the leading case on suicide risk in immigration cases (J v SSHD [2005] EWCA Civ 629, [2006] All ER (D) 382).

Crime and extradition

Joe's criminal practice is now largely limited to his work on the death penalty (see below) and extradition. Former extradition clients include Lofti Raissi, alleged to have trained the 9/11 pilots, Alexander Temerko, the successor to Mikhail Khodorkovsky as CEO of Yukos and Tagir Izmaylov, former CEO of the Russian shipping company Novoship. In both the Temerko and Izmaylov cases the court accepted that the defendants' extradition requests were politically motivated and they would be denied a fair trial in Russia for political reasons. Joe also acted for Rabah Kadre, alleged to have plotted a terrorist attack on the Strasbourg Christmas Market (Rabah Kadre v (1) France (2) Governor of Belmarsh Prison [2006] ACD 26, The Times, 12 August 2005).

In 2008 Joe advised Simon Mann in his ultimately unsuccessful attempts to resist extradition from Zimbabwe to Equatorial Guinea. Mr Mann had challenged extradition on the grounds that he faced a high risk of serious ill-treatment if removed. These efforts were thwarted when he was extradited from Zimbabwe before he had exhausted his appeal rights. Joe also appeared for Liberty (intervening) in USA v McKinnon [2008] 1 WLR 1739, [2008] 4 All ER 1012, [2008] UKHRR 1103, The Times, 6 August 2008. In that case the issue was whether pressure applied by the US prosecutors to encourage the defendant to plead guilty was so overbearing as to amount to an abuse of process.

Other significant cases

In Al Skeini Joe acted for Redress (intervening) in the Administrative Court in a case establishing that the death of a Iraqi civilian in the custody of British forces in Iraq fell within the scope of the ECHR (R (Al Skeini) v Secretary of State for Defence [2005] 2 WLR 1401, [2005] HRLR 3, [2005] UKHRR 427, [2005] ACD 51, The Times, 20 December 2004). And in Alamieyeseigha Joe acted for the former governor of Bayelsa State in Nigeria, the issue being whether the defendant enjoyed state immunity from prosecution (R (Alamieyeseigha) v CPS [2006] Crim LR 669, The Times, 16 January 2006, Admin. Ct).

Mandatory death penalty challenges

In May 2005 the High Court of Malawi ruled that the mandatory death penalty for murder violated the constitutional prohibition of inhuman and degrading punishment because it failed to distinguish between more and less serious offences (Kafantayeni v Attorney General of Malawi (2007) 46 ILM 566. As a result of this case, the courts in Malawi must now hear mitigation in all murder cases and may only impose the death penalty in the very most serious cases. Kafantayeni was argued by two young Malawian lawyers who had worked with Joe during their previous internships in chambers. This constitutional challenge was the result of a collaborative effort which also involved Keir Starmer QC and the Death Penalty Project. Joe is now working with his colleague Alison Gerry, the Death Penalty Project and local lawyers on similar challenges to the mandatory death penalty in Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Other pro bono work

Joe has been instructed in a number of death row and other appeals to the Privy Council from Caribbean jurisdictions, as both leading and junior counsel (Balson v The Commonwealth of Dominica [2005] UKPC 2, Langford & Freeman v The State [2005] UKPC 20, R v Evon Smith [2006] 1 WLR 243, Marco Oliver v The Queen [2007] UKPC 9). He has also acted in a number of applications to the European Court of Human Rights.

In 1997 Joe was an international election observer in Chechnya when the presidential elections were won by Aslan Maskhadov. Seven years later Mr Maskhadov was shot dead in the course of an FSB operation. Joe is now acting for Mr Maskhadov's family in an application to the ECtHR alleging a violation of his right to life. He is also acting in applications brought by journalists in Azerbaijan who are complaining about serious violations of their freedom of expression.

In Betayev Joe was instructed to represent the parents of two young brothers living in Chechnya who were taken away in the night by Russian federal forces. In that case the ECtHR held that the applicants' sons had to be presumed dead at the hands of the Russian authorities and that their right to life had accordingly been violated (Betayev & Betayeva v Russia, App. 37315/03). He was also instructed in Chalkley v UK (App. 63831/00) and PG and GH v UK (App. 44787/98), which deal with the use in criminal proceedings of evidence obtained in breach of article 8.

Joe has worked with Amnesty International, the Bar Human Rights Committee, the International Commission of Jurists and the Inter-Parliamentary Union on human rights and legal assistance missions to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cameroon, Georgia, Mongolia and Russia. He has also provided advocacy training to lawyers and law students in Malawi.

International election advice

In parallel with his work as a barrister, Joe has advised on elections laws in numerous transition countries across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In particular, through the OSCE he advises parliaments and electoral commissions on how to improve their electoral laws and procedures and bring them into conformity with best practice. He served as an election observer in Armenia, Bosnia, Chechnya and Georgia and was legal adviser to the international electoral observation missions for the 1996 Russian presidential elections, the 2003 Russian parliamentary elections and the 2004 presidential elections in the United States.

Over the years Joe has worked on elections and elections laws in Afghanistan, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Chechnya (Russia), Croatia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia, Tajikistan, Transdniestra (Moldova), Turkmenistan, Ukraine, the UK, the USA and Uzbekistan.

Year of Call

1997

Education

BSc (First Class), LLM

Email Address

j.middleton@doughtystreet.co.uk

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Specialist Teams

Member :

• Extradition
• Human Rights
• Immigration
• International Law Group
• Public and Administrative Law