KS v National Crime Agency [2024] EWCA Civ 1095 – an appeal to the Court of Appeal Civil Division, against the IPT’s finding that the National Crime Agency were entitled to apply for a Thematic Equipment Interference warrant in order to access material intercepted from an entire telecommunications network – EncroChat – with a usership of 60,000.

R v Neophytou and Neophytou [2021] EWCA Crim 169 – an appeal against the making of a multi-million pound hidden assets confiscation order, on the basis that: the learned judge at first instance miscalculated the benefit figure by extrapolating the turnover of two illicit businesses from just 6 days of footfall data from one of those businesses; failed to give due regard to the delay in the proceedings; wrongly increased the confiscation order to reflect the change in value of money, when the money had not been wholly retained; and imposed an unfair default term. Tom is conducting an appeal against the Court of Appeal’s judgment, to the European Court of Human Rights. One of the grounds is that it is a breach of Article 5 of the Convention to impose a default term for a longer period than the maximum sentence for the substantive offence.

R v Paul Dunleavy [2021] EWCA Crim 39 – against convictions for terrorism offences. The judge at first instance had withdrawn from the jury the only defence (reasonable excuse under section 58(3) of the Terrorism Act 2000) to offences of collecting documents likely to be useful to a terrorist, in a case where the Appellant was 16 years old and suffering from Aspergers Syndrome (High Functioning Autism) – a symptom of which can be highly focused, obsessive interests in guns. Moreover, the trial judge rejected the submission that in an offence of preparing to commit a terrorist act, the jury had to be unanimous as to whether the Defendant intended to commit an act of terrorism himself or intended to assist another to do so. This was the first case in which psychiatric evidence was deemed admissible on the issue of whether it was ‘reasonable’ in law for a person suffering from Autism to indulge their curiosity to collect material likely to be useful to a terrorist (in this case, gun making manuals)

Re. Sadhana Soni (a solicitor) [2019] EWCA Crim 1304 – successfully defended a solicitor who was made the subject of a substantial wasted costs order by the Recorder of Leicester. The solicitor, who was not involved in criminal proceedings, made a request for information about a criminal case in the Crown Court so that it could be used in civil proceedings against the defendant. The court declined the request and then issued a wasted costs order in respect of the time it had taken the parties to respond to the request. The Lord Chief Justice agreed with Tom’s argument that the solicitor and her clients had not been parties to the criminal proceedings (a condition precedent for a wasted costs order) and so quashed the wasted costs order.

Bapinder Sandhu v The Chief Constable of West Midlands Police [2019] EWHC 3316 (Admin) – represented the Applicant in an appeal by way of case stated. The applicant was found with over £50,000 in cash. The police made an application to forfeit the cash on the basis that on a balance of probabilities, it derived from some form of predicate crime and was going to be laundered in the future. The issue in the appeal was whether the police were required to identify the class of predicate crime;

R v Lewis Poyser and others [2017] EWCA Crim 800 – defended 4 appellants in a post-R v Jogee appeal. The Appellants were convicted on the basis of parasitic accessorial liability by continuing to be involved in a kidnapping whilst foreseeing the possibility that the principal offender might wound the victim with intent, in order to reinforce the ransom demands in a way which was demonstrable to the victim’s family.

R v HM [2017] (reporting restrictions apply) – successfully overturned a conviction for an appellant alleged to be involved a multi-million pound money laundering arrangement. Millions of pounds in Sterling was deposited with the Defendant and others, and then transferred to a Hawala banker who in turn transferred the money to Iran. The Defendant claims that the money had a legitimate origin and had been raised by ex-patriate Kurds in the UK, to send back to Kurds in Iran who are currently facing significant persecution at the hands of the so-called Islamic State (Daesh). Tom argued that the learned trial judge had undermined his own directions to the jury at the conclusion of the case, such that the Court could not be sure that the jury had safely convicted;

R v Alan Evans [2015] – application for permission to appeal against a conviction for murder. The Applicant was convicted of murdering his wife by throwing her down a flight of stairs and then smothering her to death. He claimed at trial that the death had been caused as a result of a tragic accident. Post-conviction, material was discovered which (it was argued) could give rise to the possibility that a third-party intruder was responsible for the death.

R v KK [2015] EWCA Crim 13 – appeal against conviction for money laundering. At trial, there was evidence of hundreds of thousands of pounds of expenditure yet the appellant had no visible means of support. The trial judge ruled that this was sufficient to raise a case against the appellant. At the appeal it was argued that the trial judge had misinterpreted the authority of R v Anwoir which permits juries to find the existence of ‘criminal property’ without any direct evidence of the same. The Court was persuaded that the trial judge should have given further directions;

R v Ajaz Budi [2015] EWCA Crim 35 – successful appeal against conviction and sentence, on the basis of a biased summing up

R v Wheaton and Tumara [2014] EWCA Crim 1667 – proper application of the sentencing guidelines for drugs offences where there has been a reclassification of the
drugs between the commission of the offence and sentence;

R v Swinbourne [2013] EWCA Crim 2329 (2014) 178 J.P. 34 – the admissibility of confessions in ‘did he do the act’ hearings (hearings in which defendants are unfit to plead or stand trial);

R v Ziarat Mahmood [2013] EWCA Crim 1291 – a post R v Waya case. Successfully obtained the return of £50,000 to a defendant who had been made the subject of an unfair and disproportionate confiscation order based on giving inaccurate income information in a mortgage application; and Tom is regularly asked to review cases in which he was not involved at first instance, 10 to advise on any potential points of appeal. Tom has had considerable success in such appeals.