• Sean Reilly represented an individual facing a series of rape allegations arising from the client’s membership of a fetish organisation – he was fully acquitted of all charges.

       His advocate was the excellent John Carmichael of 4 Breams Buildings.

• Siobhain Egan represented a highly respected film director and artist, accused of possession of indecent photographs of children under 18 years of age.

He was first arrested three and a half years ago, immediately telling the authorities that the images would have been connected with his research work on forthcoming projects.

There was considerable delay in the final prosecution of this case, primarily because there was a problem with the Met police forensic investigation of the images.We instructed a leading firm of independent forensic computer experts who specialize in the analysis of computer pornography, who concluded that the limited access to the images was not typical of a Paedophile. We were also able to prove a timeline correlation between access to the images and our clients work projects. Additionally, the majority of the images were downloaded from a well-established US website, which contains a disclaimer stating that all the images were of models over 18years of age! This of course was something that would be been clear to the prosecuting authorities had they chosen to check before deciding to prosecute.

We had repeatedly asked the CPS to review the prosecution, and secured three wasted costs orders against the CPS because they failed to comply with orders of the Court, and in one    occasion even failed to turn up for a court hearing. Eventually, the CPS agreed with our findings and agreed to withdraw the case – on the day of trial!

The excellent Mark Cotter of 5 St Andrews Hill chambers was the advocate instructed.