Not Guilty of Attempted Murder

David Rhodes acted as sole counsel for JJ, the second of 13 defendants, in a 6 week trial for attempted murder at Woolwich Crown Court.

The Crown alleged that the stabbing incident was a gang related revenge attack with intent to kill. David led the legal argument on behalf of all the defendants and persuaded the judge to exclude all the gang evidence on the basis that the Crown had failed to prove a sufficient logical nexus between the incident and the alleged trigger event some weeks earlier and any relation to gangs.

In the result, all nine defendants in the first trial were found not guilty of attempted murder by the jury and the Crown then dropped the case against the remaining four.

David Rhodes was instructed by Laura Porteous at Shaw Graham Kersh Solicitors.