Defence lawyers try to get case thrown out

Thursday 17 March 2016

Lawyers acting for the five defendants on trial for perverting the course of justice over the death of Morgan Huelin have tried to get the case thrown out of court – saying the boys were trying to avoid getting in trouble with their parents, not trying to put off a police investigation.

The five lawyers representing the teenage defendants – who all deny the charges against them – applied to have the prosecution’s case withdrawn on the basis that there was ‘no case to answer’.

The Crown’s case has been that the boys, who cannot be named because of their age, moved Morgan out of the garage where he had spent the night to avoid bringing a police investigation to the property, where there were drugs hidden in one of the defendant’s bedrooms upstairs.

For the case to be thrown out, the Youth Court would have to agree that the prosecution had not proved their case beyond reasonable doubt – the lawyers had argued that prosecutor Howard Sharp QC had proved that they the boys moved Morgan, but that they had not proved why.

To be convicted of perverting the course of justice, the Crown would have to prove that the boys’ actions were intended to thwart or impede the police investigation.

Advocate Christina Hall said: “The Crown’s case is in my submission tenuous, and based on inferences.”

And she added that the boy whose house it was had done nothing to get rid of the drugs or the USB stick containing indecent images of children before the police arrived – proof, she said, that they were not acting to try to put off the police.

Advocate David Steenson, representing another defendant, said that the simpler explanation was that the teenagers had woken up, found Morgan unconscious, and panicked.

“Hold the press, teenage boys misjudged a situation when in a panic,” he said.

And he said that without his client’s account in an interview with the police, the detectives would have had no information to go on at all, and the prosecution for perverting the course of justice would not be happening.

“The irony is that his honesty, for which the police were extremely grateful, has landed him here,” he said.

“This is a face-saving exercise conducted because the police made a terrible misjudgement and arrested these boys for murder. He is being punished, in my respectful submission, for being truthful.”