Allison Bailey

Overview

Allison is best known as a criminal defence specialist. However her practice also includes inquest law, public inquiries and mediation.

Practice

CRIME

Allison is a very well regarded advocate and a popular choice with both solicitors and lay clients. Her criminal defence practice encompasses the range of jury trial experience, including cases involving serious violence and complex and organised crime, such as murder (led junior), manslaughter, s.18 GBH, aggravated and armed robbery, firearms, complex fraud, drugs and political protest cases.

She has appeared in the Court of Appeal as junior counsel to Orlando Pownall QC for the appellant (R v MM 2010 EWCA Crim 783), in a case involving the attempted murder of a police officer by shooting. The Court of Appeal accepted the appellant's submission that it was not part of a judges function to cross examine a defendant less he run the risk of prejudicing the jury by giving the impression that he disbelieved an accused's account. This was an important case which adds to the case law against trial judges seeking to enter the arena in trials, in such a manner that would occasion unfairness to a Defendant and ultimately grounds of appeal and the quashing of a conviction.

Allison was one of a team of barristers from Garden Court who secured a landmark acquittal in a ground breaking anti-war crimes case (R v S & Others at Hove Crown Court). The Defendants broke into an arms factory and caused £180,000 worth of damage. The Defendants submitted that the arms factory supplies vital Arming Units for Israeli F-16 jet fighters, which were being used at the time in the occupied Gaza Strip, in a prolonged offensive codenamed Operation Cast Lead in which over a thousand Palestinians were killed or injured. Allison played a particularly active role in the trial, calling a key expert witness on Arab-Israeli geopolitics, which proved pivotal in persuading the jury to accept the Defendant's defences of lawful excuse, prevention of crime and necessity.

Many of the cases that Allison has been instructed in have involved instructing defence experts to challenge such issues as joint enterprise, where vulnerability and suggestibility are in issue and complex psychiatric cases concerning fitness to plead and stand trial. She is also enthusiastic about challenging scientific evidence in appropriate cases, such as DNA, cell-site, facial mapping and voice recognition evidence. Allison has also succeeded in getting novel expert evidence before a jury.

INQUESTS & PUBLIC INQUIRIES

The Azelle Rodney Inquiry 2012
Allison was embedded as an observer within the legal team acting on behalf of the family of Azelle Rodney in this public inquiry chaired by Sir Christopher Holland into the police shooting of Mr Rodney in 2005. The first such public inquiry to replace an inquest, which is due to report its findings in 2013. Click here, for press coverage.

LAG training on Inquests and Public Inquires, November 2012 Allison has completed this highly regarded and comprehensive training on all aspects of inquest law by leading practitioners in the field, which in the light of the Azelle Rodney Inquiry, included public inquires advocacy training.

MEDIATION

Allison was accredited as a mediator in 2009, following successful completion of training at the London School of Mediation. She has seen first hand mediation provide an attractive alternative to otherwise lengthy, stressful, and uncertain civil litigation, in appropriate cases, especially where the parties wish to avoid adverse publicity and continue with a professional relationship. She is a sensitive and respected presence within the mediation, able to draw on many years experience of litigation and a wealth of experience and understanding of interpersonal relationships gained from a diverse and varied cultural and work background.

Notable Cases

Murder & Manslaughter

• R v MM and Another at Inner London Crown Court
  R v M at the Court of Appeal
  Junior defence counsel in a cut-throat trial involving charges of attempted murder of a serving police officer and the related firearms offences. Thereafter on appeal to the Court of Appeal, the court giving further guidance to trial judges not to interfere with the fairness of a trial by entering the arena to cross-examine the accused.
  
• R v DF at the Central Criminal Court
  Defence counsel in a case concerning single-punch manslaughter, following an altercation between players at a local league football match. The case, and subsequent sentence toward the lower end of the sentencing bracket, attracted publicity.

Protest

• R v S & Others at Hove Crown Court)
  Defence counsel in a multi-handed trial involving eight anti-war activists who broke into an arms factory and caused £180,00 worth of damage. The case attracted substantial publicity due to the defences of lawful excuse, prevention of crime and necessity.
  
• R v ES at Maidstone Crown Court
  Defence counsel in the trial of an anti-war protestor charged with the witness intimidation of the Managing Director of an arms factory.

Fraud & Dishonesty

• R v EP and Others at Wood Green Crown Court
  Defence counsel in a multi-handed case involving the attempted multi-million pound fraud of the UK clearing banks using cloned micro-chip technology and dummy ATM facades.
  
• R v C and Others at Wolverhampton Crown Court
  Defence counsel in a multi-handed case involving £250,000 credit card fraud against the UK clearing banks.
  
• R v D at Southwark Crown Court
  Defence counsel in a case involving fraud of £50,000 by an employee of a multi-national bank.
  
• R v JC at Wood Green Crown Court
  Defence counsel in a case alleging cheque forgery over a number of years by a firms accountant, where false accounting was part of the firms business structure.

Drugs

• R v S & Others at Iselworth Crown Court
  Defence counsel in a multi-handed trial involving substantial multiple kilo cannabis supply.
  
• R v N & Others at Southwark Crown Court
  Defence counsel in a case involving alleged conspiracy to supply Class A drugs by young inner city men following covert police purchases of drugs and focused surveillance.

Violence

• R v JK at Chichester Crown Court
  Defence counsel in a trial involving charges of s.18 GBH glassing by one young woman against another following bullying on facebook.
  
• R v X at Inner London Crown Court
  Defence counsel in case involving s.18 GBH, random multiple complainant stabbing, involving conflicting psychiatric evidence as to disposal and ultimately disposal by way of hospital order.
  
• R v RE at Inner London Crown Court
  Defence counsel in a case involving historic armed robbery of a bank following the discovery of new forensic evidence.
  
• R v HK at Birmingham Crown Court
  Junior defence counsel in a trial involving multiple charges of armed robbery of banks, where the defence was fit-up by police. Thereafter at appeal to the Court of Appeal and CCRC.

General

• R v NL & Others at Newcastle Crown Court
  Junior defence counsel in a case alleging conspiracy to control prostitution via an online site and brothels in the North of England. The case attracted substantial publicity because it involved a serving police officer moonlighting as a sex worker and the alleged tacit approval to run the brothels by some local police forces.
  
• R v DF at Southwark Crown Court
  Defence counsel in a trial alleging multiple counts of racially aggravated harassment between neighbours; white complainant, black accused.

Background

Allison was born and raised in Cowley in Oxford, the daughter of Jamaican parents. Her mother was a state registered nurse and her father a publican. She spent much of her youth working and travelling around the USA, variously working as a waitress in New York, a rickshaw driver on San Francisco's Embarcadero and for several years as a community bookseller and organiser in the San Francisco Bay Area.

On Allison's return to the UK, and whilst studying full-time for her undergraduate degree in sociology at the University of Manchester; for which she would recieve a first, Allison worked part-time as a housing support worker with women and children survivors of sexual violence. After graduation she moved to London to pursue postgraduate law qualifications, working part-time as an outdoor clerk for solicitors in the civil and criminal courts, ultimately being called to the bar of England and Wales by Middle Temple in the summer of 2001.

Scholarships

• Benefactors Scholarship, awarded by Middle Temple.
• Blackstone Entrance Exhibition, awarded by Middle Temple.
• Baron Boulos Memorial Prize, for distinction in the study of sociology, awarded by the University of Manchester.
  

Professional membership

• Criminal Bar Association
• Inquest
• PALG
• LAG

Allison is a member of Garden Court Mediation (accredited by the Civil Mediation Council)

Profile updated January 2013

Year of Call

Middle Temple

Education

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