Our investigations team was instructed by a London based law firm, to support their client who was making an appeal against conviction.

The client was an individual who had been charged and convicted of assault, however they wanted to clear their name as they believed the complainant fabricated evidence in order to support an asylum application.

The conviction had led to the client being sent to prison, and their personal and professional reputation ruined.

The process

The case involved the alleged victim making an allegation against the client, which amounted to one word against another.

Our investigations team reviewed the prosecution case file, and identified numerous disclosure failings from the police.

Furthermore, there were numerous reasonable lines of enquiry that were not pursued by the police; including previous allegations the accuser had made against other individuals which were believed to be fabricated.

Our team worked closely with instructed solicitors and counsel, reviewing the failings and also identifying additional lines of enquiry that had to be pursued, in order to ensure the Court of Appeal had all the available information.

Our team conducted numerous witness enquiries in the UK, speaking with individuals who had also been implicated by the alleged victim.

This also involved tracing other individuals in Pakistan. We spoke with them and obtained their witness accounts, and corroborating evidence.

We also conducted extensive social media analytics, to make connections and gather evidence of the alleged victim’s activity in comparison with the evidence they gave during the trial – this disproved their account and showed that they had perjured themselves in court.

The result

Once our evidential package was completed, this was passed to counsel, and the conviction was successfully overturned in the Court of Appeal.

This is a very high bar, but given the conviction was unsafe, the court had no choice but to overturn the conviction.