Not guilty of murder, manslaughter and of assisting an offender for Clare Evans led by Louise Sweet K.C.

Not guilty of murder, manslaughter and of assisting an offender for Clare Evans led by Louise Sweet K.C. of 2 Bedford Row, instructed by John Onions Solicitors, after a trial in the Warwick Crown court.

Two cars containing four men arrived on a residential street in Leamington Spa in the early hours of an August morning last year. Their aim, said the prosecution, was to carry out a contract killing, but even they accepted that the deceased was probably not the intended target. It was no coincidence that the shooting occurred directly outside what police later discovered was a large-scale cannabis factory hiding behind the facade of an ordinary terraced house.

As the defendant and his passenger waited outside the cannabis factory, the deceased and 2 of his friends who had links to the factory, had been tipped off and they rushed to the same location. Upon arrival the defendant's passenger exited his car and fired one shot before the deceased, at that time uninjured, shouted 'fake gun' and began to approach the gunman.  The shooter fired again, again not connecting with the deceased. The gunman was forced to retreat, walking backwards as the deceased and one of his friends approached, as seen by 2 independent witnesses who were awoken by the sounds of shouting and then gunfire. 

The gunman fired a final shot which caused the fatal injury, and then ran away, leaving the defendant still in the driver's seat of his car. The defendant drove away at speed, picking up the gunman  before leaving Leamington Spa in convoy with the other car that was also parked on the same street.  The defendant's car was dumped en route to Basildon, never to be seen again.

After a thorough and painstaking police investigation involving ANPR, CCTV and mobile telephone evidence, the defendant was arrested 6 weeks later.  

He was the only suspect to be detained, the whereabouts of the other 3 men, including the gunman, are still unknown to this date. 

At trial Louise Sweet K.C put forward the alternative proposition that the reason the 4 men were  in Leamington Spa was in fact to burgle the cannabis factory, and that they were the ones who were surprised by the arrival of the deceased's group, rather than them being the ones 'lying in wait' for the deceased's group to arrive.  

This was a team effort by the defence, special mention to Lauren Offers of John Onions Solicitors who saw the client almost every week for 3 months in order to gather his instructions.

The defendant insisted that the gunman had just offered him money in return for a lift to Leamington Spa and back and that he had no idea he had a gun at any point before the shots were fired. The defendant, a Romanian national of only 19 years old with a pregnant girlfriend, was so terrified  of what the shooter might do to him or his family if he did not pick him up that he did collect him from a nearby street where he had been hiding. 

Ms Sweet K.C. carefully and meticulously deconstructed the crown's case theory, pointing to the evidence that in fact demonstrated her proposition was the far more likely reason for the defendant's group to have been in Leamington Spa.

Always a pleasure to watch and learn from King’s Counsel at their best.

The jury returned their verdicts after just 2 hours and 36 minutes in retirement.