Public to pay defence fees of man who attacked woman

Friday 04 November 2022

Public funds will be used to cover the legal costs of a 29-year-old convicted of attacking a woman, the Royal Court has decided.

Following a trial in March, Joshua Clark Lyons was found guilty of an assault at his flat in August 2021, and handed a sentence of 100 hours’ community service.

However, he was acquitted of four counts of the more serious charge of grave and criminal assault, giving rise to his application to get his costs back.

At a Royal Court hearing last month, Lyons' lawyer, Advocate David Steenson, explained that the total costs amounted to some £100,000, of which the defendant had paid £15,000.

He argued that his client had "won on every issue in the case", and was convicted of the lesser charge only on the basis of his own admissions.

However, Crown Advocate Simon Thomas complained that a series of text messages at the heart of the defence case – undermining the victim's account – should have been produced, or at least referred to, in the defence case summary.

"I can understand the concern on the part of the prosecution over the way these texts were produced shortly before the cross-examination of the victim and they must have taken the prosecution by surprise," said Commissioner Julian Clyde-Smith, who was sitting as a single judge.

"In my view, they seriously impacted the credibility of the victim."

However, he noted that it was important to weigh up a number of factors when considering the general principle that costs should not be awarded in cases where the criminal process was properly engaged and the defendant convicted of an offence.

He pointed to: the defence statement which did set out its outline defence and, by implication, the fact that the defendant would claim that the victim was lying; the fact that the text messages had emerged because the prosecution made a 'bad character' application, opening up a wider examination of the relationship between the accused and the victim; the fact that the victim had declined to allow the police to examine her mobile telephone, which should have alerted the police to its possible contents; and that the police had access to the defendant's mobile phone and its contents.

Handing down his judgment, the Commissioner said: "The defendant was convicted on the alternative charge, put to the jury by the trial judge, on the basis of his account that was set out in his defence case statement.

"It is fair for Advocate Steenson to say that the defendant won on every issue in the case. This was not a case in which the evidence of the prosecution – in essence the evidence of the victim – was found sufficient on some charges but not on others.

"It was insufficient on all the charges in the indictment.

"The defendant was convicted of this one lesser offence on his own admission contained in his defence-case statement.

"In these circumstances, it would not be just for the defendant to be deprived of his costs."

"It would not be just for the defendant to be deprived of his costs "

The Commissioner subsequently directed that the costs should be paid "in such sums as appear to the Judicial Greffier to be reasonably sufficient to compensate the Defendant for the expenses he has properly incurred in carrying on the defence".