Mark Robinson of the Garden Court Crime Team acted for the defendant instructed by Kate Youssouf and Mel Stooks of GT Stewart.
The 19-year-old defendant was charged with numerous counts of aggravated vehicle taking and dangerous driving by multiple police forces.
However, following the receipt of a fourth positive conclusive grounds decision, the prosecution offered no evidence on all counts, except for one count of dangerous driving pursued by one police force.
The young defendant had been exploited and forced to steal high-value cars for an organised criminal gang as part of a previous drugs debt, where he had been subjected to debt bondage.
The dangerous driving followed a vehicle theft in Essex, leading to a high-speed pursuit on the A13, where the defendant drove up to 90mph in the stolen vehicle, and drove on the wrong side of the dual carriageway. The police were forced to ram the stolen vehicle to prevent the defendant’s escape.
The defendant advanced that he would face consequences by way of physical harm if he did not bring the stolen vehicle to his exploiters. At trial, he gave evidence about the number of cars he had previously been forced to steal and telematics machines used to carry out the thefts.
Nearly two thousand pages of social services records were available to corroborate the defendant’s account, and intelligence from various police forces, school records and National Referral Mechanism (NRM) decisions that the judge ruled were inadmissible. However, a psychologist’s report, detailing the defendant’s psychological profile and suggestibility, was adduced.
The defendant gave an account on his exploitation, and the prosecution were unable to challenge his evidence due to the existence of the comprehensive material that the judge excluded.
In his closing submissions to the jury, Mark highlighted that the defendant’s detailed account of exploitation had gone without challenge by the prosecution. The jury were directed on the s.45 Modern Slavery Act 2015 defence, where the judge, in an unusual step, incorporated the entirety of the defendant’s account into his legal directions.
After six hours of deliberation, the jury returned a not guilty verdict by a majority of 10-2.
