Successful Abuse of Process Judgement results in Not Guilty verdict at Leicester Crown Court

Rag Chand and Zaheer Afzal of Counsel were instructed by Messrs PRHS Solicitors to defend their client who was charged with being a major player within a large scale drugs conspiracy.

At trial, Rag Chand ran a successful abuse of process argument on the basis that the prosecution could not have a retrial once they had been forced to concede the client was dealing drugs in ounces & not kilograms.

The client had maintained throughout that he was not engaged in a multi-kilo conspiracy but was occasionally dealing socially from purchases of cannabis made from another man charged in the conspiracy.

The client’s case was the drugs were bought from another on the understanding he was going to use them for himself – he then decided afterwards that he would sell some socially to fund his habit.

The judge stopped the prosecution case despite the prosecution making determined efforts to request a retrial based on their new case theory (in effect adopting the entire defence case).