With over a decade of experience of criminal jury advocacy and an in-depth knowledge of the criminal justice system, Maya is well suited to appearing in contested trials in this area. She regularly advises and appears in relation to complex civil damages claims against the police and public authorities, that include local authorities, social services, the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the probation and prison services, as well as G4S, Serco, Sodexo, and other third-party contractors; as well as religious institutions. Maya has significant experience in the full range of torts, data-protection breaches, discrimination (both Equality Act 2010 and Article 14 ECHR). Her HRA expertise includes “failure to remove” cases, and failure to investigate serious sexual offences or to identify victims of modern slavery. She has a particular interest in how the HRA can fill the gap where public authority negligence fails to provide a remedy and has published articles on this issue. 

Maya has notable expertise in statutory compensation claims including via the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, the Miscarriage of Justice Application Scheme (with a focus on victims of trafficking) and the Windrush Compensation Scheme. She has also advised a number of applicants in relation to the Harrods Redress Scheme, which seeks to compensate victims of abuse perpetrated by Mohamed Al Fayed.

Notable cases include:

Carter v Chief Constable of Essex Police [2025] EWCA Civ 367: Maya was lead counsel for the Appellant in the Court of Appeal. The case turned on the proper interpretation of s54(4)(a) of PACE 1984, and whether objectively reasonable grounds to suspect clothing is going to be used for self-harm or harm of another are required before a custody officer can direct the forcible removal of such clothes from a detainee in a police station. 

O’Connor v Panel Chair (Police Misconduct Panel) and James Mason [2025] EWCA Civ 27: Maya was lead counsel in the Court of Appeal only in this successful appeal against a decision of the Police Misconduct Panel to impose a final written warning on a senior police officer who committed gross misconduct when the appellant, Kristina O’Connor, called the police for help. The Court of Appeal clarified the correct approach to the Outcomes Guidance, addressing a line of cases in the Administrative Court which had developed differing principles. The officer in question was subsequently dismissed.

Ali v Secretary of State for Justice [2023] EWHC 3059 (Admin), 29 November 2023: Maya was lead counsel in this Miscarriage of justice compensation judicial review in which the High Court concluded that where a third party is directly  implicated in the offending through DNA evidence of their presence at the scene, and even where this led to the applicant’s conviction being overturned, the applicant for compensation would need to show that the DNA showed beyond reasonable doubt that the third party had carried out the offending in order to satisfy the “innocence” test. 

R(RN) v First-tier Tribunal [2023] EWCA Civ 882: Lead counsel for the intervener, the Anti Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit (ATLEU), in this successful challenge to the meaning of ‘crime of violence’ in the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme.

Inquests

Maya has appeared on behalf of bereaved families in inquests into deaths following police shootings, police contact, police chases, self-inflicted deaths in psychiatric units/acute mental health wards, domestic homicides (‘femicides’), where Article 2 of the ECHR is engaged, and numerous prison death inquests. Two of these prison inquests are featured in the recent INQUEST publication, ‘Deaths in prison: A national scandal’ as examples of inquests that have exposed dangerous failures in the prison system. She has also acted in a number of inquests into self-inflicted deaths in the community of young people with autism, and other neurodevelopmental conditions, who have had contact with CAMHs and other local authority services, as well for children and young people who have died whilst in the care of a local authority. 

Notable cases include:

• Sole junior counsel in the controversial inquest into the murder by the Russian State of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, on behalf of his widow Marina Litvinenko and their son, before it was converted into a public inquiry (she went on to act for Marina Litvinenko in the European Court of Human Rights in her successful claim against the Russian Federation).
• Lead Counsel for Rianna Cleary, the mother of Aisha Cleary, who gave birth alone in a prison cell in HMP Bronzefield, in the very high-profile inquest into the baby’s death (the first ever inquest into a prison baby death). For further details, see here and here. 

• Currently Lead Counsel for the mother of Baby OH (aka Baby C), who was a prisoner at HMP Foston Hall, in the inquest into Baby OH’s death (due to be heard in September 2026). See here.

Public Inquiries 

Maya commenced her career at the Bar as junior counsel for the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) in the 1998 Macpherson Inquiry - the landmark inquiry into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, and whilst still a second-six pupil. She was key to drafting the CRE’s closing submissions on the issue of institutional racism. 

She is currently lead counsel for Peter Francis, the whistle-blower and former undercover police officer who exposed activities of the Special Demonstration Squad (including in relation to Black Justice Groups and the family of Stephen Lawrence) in the long-running Undercover Policing Inquiry,  The inquiry is scrutinising the actions of undercover police officers who permeated hundreds of political groups during the past five decades and Maya has acted for Mr Francis for over a decade. 

She is also currently lead counsel, instructed by multiple firms, for a number of bereaved families and a former patient in The Lampard Inquiry which was set up to investigate the deaths of mental health inpatients in Essex between 2000 and 2023. This is the first public inquiry into mental health services that has ever been held in England and established by a Minister.

Maya is particularly experienced in the context of criminal justice-related judicial review: for example, prisoners’ rights, challenges to youth court jurisdiction; Crown Court bail decisions; court refusals to appoint an intermediary; police failures to issue a caution or reprimand; Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decisions to prosecute; CPS failures to prosecute rape and sexual offences; the Secretary of State’s failure to provide statutory compensation for miscarriages of justice; compensation refusals by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA); Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) refusals to refer cases back to the Court of Appeal; decisions of the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC); and decisions of the Single Competent Authority (SCA) in relation to victims of trafficking. 

Maya has advised NGOs on various public law challenges in wider contexts, for example the terms of the Windrush Compensation Scheme and voter ID requirements.
 

Maya has a wealth of experience in the prison law context, bringing judicial review challenges (often combined with HRA damages claims) to:

• unlawful detention, recall, sentence (mis)calculation, licence conditions, prison conditions, security (re)categorisation, searches, discipline, HDC refusal, the treatment of foreign national prisoners, and refusal of a place in a prison Mother & Baby Unit;
• parole board decisions; and
• other human rights and discrimination challenges.
   

Maya’s criminal practice is limited to appellate challenges with a focus on the rights of children, CCRC appeals and victims of trafficking cases.

In the past, Maya had a busy and challenging Crown Court practice and appeared as junior counsel in more than 20 murder trials. In later years, she focussed on representing children and young people, alongside the innovative charity Just for Kids Law, of which she was a founding board member. She brings that experience to bear in her appellate practice. 

Case examples:

R v AZE [2022] EWCA Crim 1008: The Court of Appeal Criminal Division quashed a conviction, nearly three years out of time, of an age-disputed Vietnamese minor found in a cannabis factory, where the trial judge failed to direct the jury on the under-18 provisions in section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act, which, unlike in the case of adults, did not require the jury to be satisfied of compulsion.

Danny Mansfield v DPP [2021] EWHC 2938 (Admin); [2021] 11 WLUK 20: Lead counsel in important appeal by way of case stated on issue of the magistrates’ court’s jurisdiction in Category 2 abuse of process cases. The Divisional Court found that the seminal judgment, R v Horseferry Road Magistrates Court, ex parte Bennett (No.1) [1994] 1 A.C. 42, did not exclude the magistrates' jurisdiction to stay proceedings for abuse of process in all cases falling within the second category of abuse that it identified, departing from Nembhard v DPP [2009] EWHC 194 (Admin) and Woolls v North Somerset Council [2016] EWHC 1410 (Admin).

Maya advised the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) on the new National Operating Model (NOM), published July 2023, which sets out an approach to rape and serious sexual offences (RASSO) investigations that is victim-centred, suspect-focused, and context-led. From 2022 to 2023, she served as a member of the Independent Academic Advisory Panel on Race disproportionality in Taser use (TASERD) led by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing and chaired by Junior Smart. 

Maya has been recently appointed as a Specialist Panel Member of the FA Safeguarding Review Panel. She also serves as a legal specialist member of the Independent Expert Panel for the government’s Capture Redress Scheme for former postmasters, administered by Dentons. 

Maya has experience of conducting highly sensitive, and confidential, investigations. She understands the sorts of litigation that could arise from the issues being investigated and can conduct a comprehensive review that brings effective change where necessary.

She was a member of the JUSTICE working group on outsourcing and administrative justice, chaired by former Court of Appeal Judge Sir Gary Hickinbottom (the report can be found here. She also served as a member of the JUSTICE working party on Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) disproportionality in the youth justice system, chairing the sub-group on biased perceptions and contributing to the overall findings (report can be found here). In 2017, she published a report on pregnant women’s access to prison Mother and Baby Units (MBUs), which saw her gain permission from the Ministry of Justice to interview a range of incredibly vulnerable stakeholders (report can be found here). 

Maya frequently publishes in her areas of expertise. Her more recent work includes:

Recent Publications

• “No better, no worse: Ineffectual interventions by public authorities will not give rise to negligence liability”, co-authored with Laura Profumo, Journal of Professional Negligence, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2023, pp. 53-57.
• Contributor to Police misconduct: legal remedies, edited by Stephen Cragg KC and Samuel Jacobs (LAG, 2022).
• A chapter on compensation claims for victims of trafficking in the handbook Human trafficking and modern slavery: law and practice, edited by Philippa Southwell, Michelle Brewer, and Ben Douglas-Jones KC (Bloomsbury Professional, Third Edition, due September 2026).

Editorial

• Editorial comment board for Thomson Reuter’s Criminal Law Week
• Contributing editor of seminal criminal textbook Archbold: criminal pleading, evidence & practice (Sweet & Maxwell); contributes to three chapters.
• Quarterly Police law updates in LAG’s Legal Action magazine, written with Stephen Cragg KC and Carolynn Gallwey of Bhatt Murphy Solicitors.