Lawyers’ Incompetence Prejudiced Fair Trial

Regina v Nangle (TLR 9 January CA)

The defendant was convicted of robbery for which he was sentenced to nine years imprisonment. The principal grounds of appeal turned on the incompetence of the appellant’s legal advisers. The relevant deficiencies could not be described as approaching, let alone, amounting to, ‘flagrant incompetence’, and indeed that might no longer be the appropriate measure of whether the court would quash a conviction where in this context, article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights required the hearing of the charges to be fair. If the conduct were such that that objective was not met, then the court might be compelled to intervene, but that was not the case here. The overriding consideration was whether there had been a fair trial.