Barrister Suspended From Practice for Non-Disclosure (Should he have been Jailed?)

London: A leading criminal silk whose ‘lamentable’ failure to disclose key evidence led to a conviction for perverting the course of justice being overturned has been suspended for a year. Timothy Raggatt QC ‘decided together with others in the prosecution team and/or advised the Crown Prosecution Service not to disclose’ the existence of surveillance material which undermined a key prosecution witness, the Bar Tribunals & Adjudication Service (BTAS) found.

The barrister, formerly head of chambers at 4 King’s Bench Walk, was leading prosecution counsel in the trial of five men for the murder of 24-year-old Clinton Bailey in Coventry in 2005. The five were found guilty and jailed for a total of 146 years while a sixth man, Conrad Jones, was later convicted for allegedly threatening key witness Maria Vervoort. Jones was said to have threatened Vervoort near Nottingham station in June 2006, shortly before the murder trial began, and was jailed in 2007 for 12 years.
However, his conviction was overturned in 2014 after surveillance material showing that Jones was in Coventry around the time Vervoort said he threatened her in Nottingham, undermined Vervoort’s credibility. Raggatt had been aware of the material in late 2006. The Court of Appeal said there had been ‘a lamentable failure of the prosecutor’s obligations’ to disclose the surveillance material.

Raggatt, called to the bar in 1972, has this week been suspended for 12 months and ordered to pay the Bar Standards Board’s costs in the sum of £18,600. He ‘knew, or ought to have known, that the prosecution had in its possession such material which supported [Jones’] alibi evidence and which undermined the evidence of one of its leading prosecution witnesses’, BTAS found. ‘It was this failure that meant the conviction was unsafe and overturned on appeal.’ The tribunal found that Raggatt had ‘engaged in conduct prejudicial to the interests of justice and had failed to assist the court in the administration of justice.’

Jones was reportedly paid more than £100,000 by the CPS to settle a civil claim over his imprisonment while two of the men jailed for Bailey’s murder had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2016. The disciplinary findings against Raggatt are unrelated to the two men’s cases.

A BSB spokesperson said: ‘This case serves as a reminder to all practitioners about the need to meet their duties relating to disclosure. In the circumstances of this case, the tribunal found that Mr Raggatt’s conduct had been prejudicial to the interests of justice and had failed to assist the court.’

Source: Sam Tobin, Law Gazette, https://rb.gy/9uybqq