Theft Case Dropped Before Trial Due To Defence Strategy - Southwark Crown Court 2025

Our Client was charged with conspiracy to commit theft contrary to section 1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977 after he was arrested at the scene of a ‘phone snatching’ outside a nightclub in Soho last year. It was alleged that our client had been part of an agreement to steal the phone and had played a role in facilitating it by distracting the victim. However, bizarrely, the police accepted that it was our client who had actually recovered the stolen phone and returned it to the victim after pursuing the individual who had snatched it. He was 17 years old at the time but turned 18 before his first court appearance and was therefore tried as an adult.

We first represented our client as duty solicitor at the police station. We advised our client on the strength of the evidence against him and took detailed instructions from him. Our client denied any involvement in the theft, and we therefore advised him to put forward a prepared statement in police interview to advance his account at the earliest opportunity. Despite doing so, he was charged at the police station and bailed to attend Court.

At the first appearance in the Magistrates’ Court, our client indicated a ‘not guilty’ plea and, given that conspiracy is an indictable only offence, the case was sent straight up to the Crown Court. At the Plea and Trial Preparation Hearing, the Crown substituted the charge to one of theft, our client formally entered a ‘not guilty’ plea, and a trial was fixed for 2027. Our client was therefore facing a Crown Court trial in his 20s for his alleged involvement in an offence which occurred when he was just 17 years old.

After the Crown served all of their evidence, Paralegal Maeve Carroll met with our client and took detailed instructions from him. This included showing him CCTV footage of the ‘phone snatching’ in which the Crown had purportedly identified our client distracting the victim immediately prior to the theft. However, upon reviewing this, our client instructed that the individual in the CCTV footage was not him. He denied being pictured in the footage at all, and was even able to point to discrepancies in the clothing they were wearing.

On the basis of these instructions, Paralegal Maeve Carroll carefully drafted a Defence Statement setting out our client’s defence and making nuanced disclosure requests which sought to test the reliability of the Crown’s identification evidence. This was served on the Crown and the Court following approval from our client.

In light of our Defence Statement, the Crown reviewed the case again and concluded that there was no longer sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction. The Crown could not rule out that our client was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. As such, the Crown formally offered no evidence against our client, and a ‘not guilty’ verdict was recorded thereafter.

We are delighted that our client, a young man of previous good character, is able to move on with his life as he enters adulthood without this case hanging over his head for years to come. By preparing and submitting a strategic Defence Statement, we were able to bring our client’s case to a close years before trial.