PRACTICE SUMMARY
Doughty Street is renowned for housing many of the leading specialist criminal appeal barristers working on cases in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, the Caribbean, Hong Kong and elsewhere. The Doughty Street Appeal Unit is headed by Paul Taylor who, together with twelve others from the team, wrote the leading textbook in this field, Taylor on Criminal Appeals, published by Oxford University Press. Another member, Joel Bennathan QC, co-authored the new Criminal Appeals Handbook from Bloomsbury, aimed at members of the public as well as practitioners. To see Joel and Paul discussing some of the issues you may wish to have in mind when considering mounting a criminal appeal, please watch this short video.
We have appeared in some of the most important miscarriage of justice cases over the last 25 years including the Birmingham six, Myra Hindley, Ahluwhalia, Guildford four, Rowe (in Davies, Johnson and Rowe), the “Karl Bridgewater” murder, the Cardiff three, Venables and Thompson, Sarah Thornton, Michael Stone, Derek Bentley, Harry Mackenney and Bruce Childs and Ken Erskine (“The Stockwell Strangler”).
We accept instructions from solicitors in the usual way. Please contact the criminal clerks.
We are also regularly instructed directly by members of the public who may want a second opinion. This can be a cost-effective way to secure specialist advice, and more information can be found by clicking here. Please note members of the public wishing to take advice under the legal aid scheme must instruct a solicitor; we will be pleased to advice on suitably experienced choices.
For all our clients we can offer a “triage” service, where for an initial fixed fee preliminary advice can be obtained to determine whether or not there are any merits in pursuing an appeal. Please call our criminal clerks to discuss your individual case.
Our Criminal Appeals Advice Line provides free preliminary advice and guidance for solicitors involved in criminal cases raising potential issues of judicial review, case stated, appeals and applications to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. For further details please click here.
Members regularly provide in-house training for solicitors on a range of appellate topics [click for our recent series of lectures].
