Jo Cecil of Garden Court Chambers’ Crime and Public Law Teams will be speaking at the Inns of Court College of Advocacy Annual Conference, which takes place tomorrow. The conference will focus on the issues practitioners face when representing vulnerable clients.
Workshops will cover diverse topics including mental health, prisoners, cultural vulnerability and vulnerable suspects and defendants. Jo is speaking on the use of intermediaries for defendants and the current imbalance defendants face within the criminal justice system.
Jo combines a mixed serious crime and public law practice with criminal justice related judicial review and civil litigation in the civil liberties sphere. She has been instructed in a number of test cases at the appellate levels resulting in significant changes to the law. These include Jogee (joint enterprise appeal) and R (OP) v Secretary of State for Justice [2014] EWHC 1944 (Admin), [2014] WLR (D) 348 - a test case concerning the lack of provision of registered intermediaries for vulnerable and child defendants in criminal trials by the Ministry of Justice as compared to their provision for Crown witnesses and complainants.
