About
A free weekly collection of criminal law links - for practitioners, law students, and anyone with an interest in the criminal justice system of England and Wales.
Curated by Sam Willis, a barrister at 5 King's Bench Walk.
News
'Home Secretary to introduce power to sack chief constables'
The Home Secretary will have the power to sack failing chief constables, under plans announced by Shabana Mahmood today. The new laws will hand Home Secretaries’ statutory powers to force the retirement, resignation or suspension of chief constables on performance grounds. The previous administration removed the power in 2011 through the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011. Currently, it is only police and crime commissioners who hold the power to dismiss a chief constable.
This comes after His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary found significant failings amongst the leadership of the West Midlands police after they recommended banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a match against Aston Villa...
'West Midlands Police chief retires over Israeli fans ban row'
The chief constable of West Midlands Police has retired after damning criticism of a decision to ban Israeli fans from a match against Aston Villa. Craig Guildford's retirement was confirmed on Friday after both Downing Street and the home secretary said this week they had lost confidence in his leadership. He faced numerous calls to resign after apologising for providing incorrect evidence to MPs, which included the denial that AI was used in a report which led to the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from the game on 6 November. Announcing his retirement, Guildford, 52, did not offer an apology and blamed what he described as the "political and media frenzy" for his decision to step down...
'Jenrick replaced as shadow justice secretary by Nick Timothy'
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch announced on Thursday that she had sacked shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, whose defection to Reform has since been confirmed. Badenoch also removed the whip from Jenrick and suspended his party membership over suspicions that he was planning to leave the party...
Jenrick, a former solicitor, had been the shadow justice secretary for around 15 months, having been appointed by the woman who defeated him in the Conservative leadership election. He was an outspoken critic of the judicial review process, which he said was ‘mummifying economic growth’ and pledged that his party would leave the European Convention on Human Rights. He also led an attack on the independence of some judges who he said ‘blur the line between adjudication and activism’...
Jenrick confirmed later on Thursday he was defecting to the Reform Party, led by Nigel Farage. His replacement as shadow justice secretary was announced as Nick Timothy, who takes up his first shadow cabinet post. Timothy, who has no legal background, was joint chief of staff to the prime minister under the leadership of Theresa May and became an MP in 2024.
'Plans to limit jury trials in England and Wales may be watered down after backlash'
Proposals to limit jury trials could be watered down after a backlash from MPs, peers and senior figures in the legal profession, the Guardian has been told. Sources say senior government officials are discussing potential changes in an attempt to draw the sting out of the plans and avoid a bruising fight in the House of Lords.
David Lammy, the justice secretary, is understood to be pushing ahead with the plans in their current form, including plans for a new criminal court where judges will hear cases on their own in an attempt to cut the courts backlog. But officials are concerned that they may struggle to get the package through the upper chamber without having to make a compromise, adding to a series of high-profile government U-turns. Any compromise is likely to include changing the measures so that two lay people sit alongside judges in so-called “swift courts”, as originally proposed by Brian Leveson in his recent review of the challenges facing the legal system in England and Wales.
One government source said: “We’ve had U-turns in recent months on inheritance tax for farmers and business rates for pubs, there is a risk that the next one is going to have to be jury trials. If we do have to compromise, it is obvious where we would do so. Generally going back to the Leveson proposals is where we would probably end up. And that would include having two lay magistrates sit with judges for trials”...
'Jury reforms could apply to cases awaiting trial, courts minister tells MPs'
Confusion has emerged over whether proposed legislation to curb jury trials would apply retrospectively after the courts minister told MPs today that some defendants who opted for a jury trial could have their fate decided by a judge instead. Courts minister Sarah Sackman told the House of Commons justice select committee that the changes will be applied to eligible cases where the trial has not commenced in the Crown court but are already in the system. However, committee member Sir Ashley Fox queried the minister’s response in light of what lord chancellor David Lammy told the committee last month.
In last month's evidence session, committee member Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst noted that there were currently 17,500 prisoners on remand and asked Lammy if the reforms would apply retrospectively. ‘No,’ Lammy replied. Sackman told MPs Lammy’s response was in the context of remand hearings. Seeking further clarification, Fox said that if a defendant has been committed to trial in the Crown court, they will be expecting a jury trial. ‘What you’re telling me is, once these changes take effect, you will divert those people committed but trial not started into the swift court. That is not what the lord chancellor said before Christmas. Most people would regard that as a retrospective change,’ Fox told the minister. Sackman replied: ‘It’s a change in relation to the procedure that applies to those cases. They’re still getting a Crown court trial under the new proposals’...
'Met Police and Sadiq Khan hail lowest homicide rates since 2014'
Homicide in London has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade, new figures released by the Metropolitan Police show. The force said 97 homicides were recorded in 2025, the lowest figure since 2014, at a rate of 1.1 per 100,000 people, lower than New York (2.8), Berlin (3.2) and Milan (1.6). It is the lowest homicide figure in London on record, once population is taken into account, the Met said. Teenage homicide, which hit record levels in 2021 when 30 young people lost their lives, has also dropped to the lowest level since 2012, with eight teenagers killed last year...
The figures released by the Met come as the latest crime figures for England and Wales also show a fall in the number of homicides to their lowest level since current methods of reporting began in 2003. Some 518 homicides were recorded by police in the year to June 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), a drop of 6% from 552 in the previous year and 27% below the pre-pandemic total of 710 in 2019-20...
'SFO director Nick Ephgrave to step down early'
The first non-lawyer to become director of the Serious Fraud Office is to step down halfway through his five-year tenure. Nick Ephgrave will retire at the end of March after 38 years’ public service. An interim director is expected to take up the post pending the appointment of a permanent successor...
Ephgrave has begun 12 investigations, including into suspected fraud at Axiom Ince. On his watch the SFO has charged 23 defendants on 54 counts of fraud, bribery and corruption, and made 34 arrests. There have been five convictions. Ephgrave, a former assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, succeeded Lisa Osofsky in September 2023 with a brief to turn the beleaguered agency around. He denied that he had been ‘pushed out’ of the role when asked by a reporter, saying it was simply ‘time to draw a close’ on his time in public life...
Cases
R v Andrew Lakeman [2026] EWCA Crim 4
The issue in this case is whether “gold pieces” as a form of wealth in a video game constitute property within the meaning of s. 4 of the Theft Act 1968. The game in question is Old School Runescape, which is a role-playing game developed and published by Jagex Ltd (‘Jagex’). It is played online by a large number of players worldwide, typically in excess of 100,000 at any one time...
... Whether a digital asset constitutes property for the purposes of the Theft Act does not depend upon the four civil law requirements identified in Ainsworth, or a test of rivalrousness, as such. Those criteria are aimed at determining whether such assets can constitute property for the purposes of private law rights. They may be helpful indicia in the criminal context but they are not determinative. Section 4 uses words of the widest ambit in “other intangible property”, whose width is reinforced by s. 5, and they should not be constrained to any greater extent than principle or policy requires. They are apt to catch any thing which can as a matter of normal use of language be described as capable of being stolen, unless there are good reasons why such a thing should be excepted. Such exceptions include the pure information principle, as we have explained it; (quite possibly) the different treatment of intellectual property; and exceptions in respect of particular sui generis assets in certain circumstances, such as those excepted in s4 of the Act and corpses and body parts, for social and historical reasons...
Gold pieces in Runescape fulfil these criteria. They are properly described as something which can be stolen as a matter of normal use of language. They do not fall within any of the established exceptions. They are not “pure knowledge”: functionally they exist as identifiable assets distinct from the code which gives rise to them and outside the minds of people. There is no good policy reason for excepting them from the category of property which can be stolen. On the contrary, they are assets which have an ascertainable monetary value and which may be traded for that value both in the game and outside the game. Within the rules of the game they represent money’s worth as the product of purchase of a bond. Outside the game they are regularly traded for money’s worth. They are capable of being subject to dishonest dealing which deprives their possessor of their use and value. It would be surprising and unsatisfactory if such dishonest dealing did not amount to the offence of theft...
Guralp Systems Limited v The Director of the Serious Fraud Office [2026] EWHC 37 (Admin)
This is an appeal to this court by case stated from a decision of the Crown Court, which lies pursuant to section 28(1) of the Senior Courts Act 1981, unless the decision of the Crown Court related to trial on indictment. It concerns the meaning and enforceability of a Deferred Prosecution Agreement dated 22 October 2019 (“the DPA”) agreed between the Serious Fraud Office (“SFO”) and Guralp Systems Limited (“GSL”). On the same day, 22 October 2019, the Crown Court (the late William Davis J as he then was) declared further to paragraph 8(1) of Schedule 17 to the Crime and Courts Act 2013 (“Schedule 17”) that (a) the DPA was in the interests of justice and (b) the terms of the DPA were fair, reasonable and proportionate. By paragraph 8(3) of Schedule 17 the DPA came into force on the making of that declaration...
... This is an issue of construction. Did the DPA expire at 22 October 2024 if GSL had not paid the whole of the sum required, or did it continue in force so that enforcement action could be taken in relation to the non-payment?...
... The case now advanced by Mr Farrell KC on behalf of GSL involves reading clause 4 of the DPA in isolation both from the rest of the DPA and from its context. Clause 14, in particular, makes it clear that failure to pay the disgorged profits by the 22 October 2024 is a breach of the DPA. Clauses 25 and 26 then specify the machinery for enabling the SFO to determine what action to take. Construing the DPA so that it remains in force for the purposes of those paragraphs and allows effective action in the interests of justice, is a conclusion which follows from the correct approach to construing commercial contracts as explained in Arnold v Britton. Furthermore, the particular context of the creation of a DPA in the context of a criminal prosecution, and of the DPA in the instant case, only serves to strengthen that conclusion...
Sentencing Remarks in R v Robert Rhodes
On the evening of 2 June 2016, you brutally murdered your estranged wife, Dawn Rhodes, in the kitchen cum dining room of your family home. She was 38 years old. You did so having enlisted the assistance of your child, then under the age of 10, to whom, by reason of reporting restrictions in this case, I shall refer throughout these remarks as ‘X’ and whose gender I shall not identify.
In 2017, you were acquitted of Dawn’s murder, having given false evidence to the effect that you had killed her whilst defending X and yourself from her unprovoked attack with a kitchen knife. At that time, you were, broadly, supported in that account by X, whose own account of events to the Police was accepted as truthful by the Prosecution and the Defence. You were to repeat your evidence in proceedings before the Family Division of the High Court, in May 2018. Your re-trial before this Court followed X’s courageous decision, in 2021, to inform trusted others that the account which X had previously given had not been truthful...
For the murder of Dawn Rhodes, I pass the only sentence which the Law allows me to pass, being life imprisonment. You will remain in custody until the Parole Board decides that you are suitable to be considered for release. The shortest period of time during which you must remain in custody is 29 years and six months, less the number of days which you have spent remanded in custody, including in relation to the related offences charged by Counts 2 and 3...
Other
'Put your trust in juries – not Lammy'
The first time I instructed Dick Ferguson QC was when he came over to England during the Troubles. It was a mess of a case in which the only hope was to get the murder charge reduced to one of manslaughter. In his closing speech to the jury he told them what a privileged position they were in, ‘because in Ireland, from where I come’, there was no such thing as a jury, and his client would have been tried by a judge sitting alone. From that moment, the jury was his. Now, if the former DPP and the lord chancellor have their way, there will be far fewer juries here, at least for those facing a short prison sentence. And if their wish becomes law, the definition of ‘short’ will surely rise...