Nick Johnson KC and Sarah Barlow Successful in Tadcaster Murder Case

July 24, 2024

A Leeds jury returned a not guilty verdict this week after the 4-week trial of a Tadcaster man charged with murdering his “best friend”, in a knife attack outside his home in the early hours of Boxing Day last year.

Upon the arrival of police at the scene, the defendant said he was responsible for his friend’s death and, later in police interview, admitted he took a kitchen knife outside to intimidate him away from the property, at the end of an all-night party where the deceased had been in arguments and fights with his former girlfriend. The defendant admitted to police he must have stabbed him with the kitchen knife on some external stairs during a struggle.

However, the following day the police found another knife, a hunting knife in a nearby commercial bin and forensic scientific evidence proved that to be the weapon which caused the fatal wound. Instructed by Colin Byrne and Takasar Ghori at Howard & Byrne Solicitors in York, Nick and Sarah served a Defence Statement arguing that the defendant only had one knife that night, the kitchen knife, that someone else present must therefore have delivered the fatal blow with the hunting knife while the defendant was fixated on a struggle over the kitchen knife and that his earlier admission to police was a genuine but mistaken belief. The police were invited to widen their investigation into others present with a view to arresting further suspects, but the police declined to do so.

The trial was both unusual and complex as the defence required Nick and Sarah to explore other potential culprits and draw out supporting circumstantial and scientific evidence which pointed towards one or more others present that night as being responsible for killing the deceased and/or then covering up that fact. They shared the advocacy in court, with Sarah taking the defendant through his evidence before the jury.

After just 4 and a half hours deliberating, the jury acquitted the defendant of both murder and manslaughter and he was discharged, having spent the previous 7 months remanded in custody.

Nick and Sarah are Head and Deputy Head of Crime respectively at Exchange Chambers’ Leeds office.