Patricia Lynch has practised from 18 Red Lion Court for the last 28 years.
In the 2008 edition of Chambers UK, A Client’s guide to the UK Legal Profession she was listed as one of the three leading Silks practising crime on the South Eastern Circuit and described as “staunch in the face of challenging and often harrowing cases.”
She has always undertaken both prosecution and defence work. As a junior she progressed to a more specialised practice involving serious sex and child abuse cases cases, particularly those involving children and other vulnerable witnesses. As a senior junior, she led in numerous serious cases. She was on the Customs "A" list dealing with substantial drug importations and VAT fraud. She prosecuted for the Serious Fraud Office, whilst continuing to defend in fraud, blackmail and violent crime.
Since taking silk, her practice has been predominantly murder, interspersed with serious sex and drugs cases. She is a strong and persuasive advocate who is not afraid of bold decision making and whose skills lie in cross-examination and the experienced and careful handling of vulnerable witnesses and defendants. She has represented a number of children and young people, often with medical, mental health and behavioural problems, in serious sex cases and has prosecuted in cases where complainants have similar difficulties. She specialises in DNA and forensic medical matters.
She has frequently been instructed by the Medical Defence Union to represent doctors accused of a variety of offences in their professional capacity and to act in both the criminal trial and subsequent disciplinary proceedings.
With the advent of the Criminal Justice Act, she was instructed by the CPS to advise and conduct legal argument at first instance and in the Court of Appeal on bad character and hearsay applications in "cold cases" for the Sapphire Unit.
Lecturing
She lectures and speaks for the Bar Council, the Criminal Bar Association, the Judicial Studies Board and Inner Temple on current law. In particular, the areas she deals with include sex legislation, vulnerable witness handling, character, hearsay and sentencing under the CJA.
CASES OF NOTE
R v Mtisi & Balci
Court of Appeal
Successful response to Prosecution appeal against a preparatory ruling on the construction of s.40C(1)a Prison Act 1952 as amended by s.22 Offender Management Act 2007. The Crown sought to argue that conveying specified prohibited material into a prison was an offence of absolute or at least strict liability. The Respondents (a solicitors clerk and an interpreter) argued that the act of conveying a mobile telephone or part thereof (sim card) into Chelmsford prison was not a criminal offence unless accompanied by a culpable state of mind. Following full argument, the Appeal was dismissed.
R v RESTON BRAHAM
Reading Crown Court
Successful defence to Manslaughter charge where innocent girl shot at ‘rave’ party in High Wycombe. Crown alleged that Defendant had produced handgun when dancing to particular D.J. playing popular song and, intending to discharge it into the ceiling, had unintentionally shot another innocent partygoer. The issue was identification based on evidence of Res Gestae supported by ‘bad character’.
R v A 17-Year-Old
5 June 2009
Chelmsford Crown Court
Defending a 17-year-old charged with murder and attempted murder by arson. This was a cold case. The allegation was that the Defendant and another 17-year-old youth, who were both 14 at the time of the offence, had set fire to a ground floor flat causing the death of one of the occupants of the upstairs flat and causing serious disability to her partner. The successful defence required a series of legal arguments objecting to the admissibility of hearsay based on rumour, confessions of a co-defendant and hearsay confessions of a co-defendant to a third party. All of the witnesses required careful handling, most were young people, the most important of which were a vulnerable 14-year-old girl with serious behavioural problems and the tenant of the flat who was a drug addict and alcoholic.
R v Hudson
29.04.08
Court: Crown Court, with Cyrus Schroff
Defending a 61-year-old man charged with the murder of his partner of 11 years in the family home. Mr Hudson was a chronic alcoholic with no recollection of events.
R v Mills
12.02.08
Court: Crown Court, with Andrew Thompson
Prosecution of a complex case of historic domestic abuse, culminating in conviction on counts alleging grievous bodily harm by sadistic torture of the accused's girlfriend and the murder of his four-month-old baby son. The complainant suffered from severe psychological injury. Bad character evidence was introduced from two previous girlfriends.
R v Nicholls 2008
Court: Crown Court, with Stephen Dyble
Defence of a 17-year-old boy, who was acquitted of murdering his newly born infant son. It was necessary to cross examine the 16-year-old mother, who was jointly charged since each accused the other.
R v Rehman 2008
Court: Crown Court, with Balbir Singh
Defence of a consultant surgeon who was acquitted of raping his wife and toddler daughter. The case stood or fell on the testimony of the wife and following cross-examination of the Complainant, the Prosecution offered no evidence.
R v Negatin
12.12.07
Court: Crown Court, with Stephen Dyble.
Defending a high-profile and evidentially complex trial in which a Lithuanian lorry driver was found guilty of the manslaughter of an illegal immigrant whom he had smuggled with five others into the UK under his lorry. The accused was Russian-speaking and the trial was conducted through an interpreter. The accused had denied that the men had been in his lorry and the trial involved evidence of tachograph and satellite tracking and argument on the admissibility of DNA evidence from a hair found on a packet of cigarettes. A successful argument at half time on point of jurisdiction led to the dismissal of one of the two counts on the indictment.
R v Mann and ors
26.07.07
Court: Crown Court. With Cyrus Shroff
Defending one of four teenaged defendants accused of murder. Successfully resisted applications by co-defendants to introduce bad character evidence against the client, who suffered from Asperger's Syndrome.
R v Farik
18.07.06
Court: Crown Court. With Cyrus Shroff
Prosecution of a widely reported trial, the defendant, a Turkish Kurd, was found guilty of murdering his Lithuanian girlfriend by strangulation and of raping and assaulting her 11-year-old daughter. The evidence of all the witnesses of various nationalities had to be given through an interpreters. The child victim, whose evidence ran to 2 lever-arch files, had to give evidence by video-link. This was a case that required the extremely skilful handling of witnesses and an appreciation of cultural difficulties, since in particular the child's grandparents viewed the matter as a family disgrace and were opposed to her giving evidence.
Stansted Hijacker Case
2001/2
Leading Counsel defending Afghani hijacker suffering serious post traumatic stress following torture by Taliban. This required sympathetic handling of client pre-trial to gain his trust and as the trial progressed his mental and physical condition deteriorated. Numerous neurological experts were called and cross-examined resulting in the jury being discharged from reaching verdicts in both trials. Duress argument adopted and repeated by co-defendants in Court of Appeal resulting in all convictions being quashed.
R v Sullivan and Ors (14.07.01, Court of Appeal - Criminal Division) [2004] EWCA Crim 1762 [2005] 1 Cr. App. R. 3 [2005] 1 Cr. App. R. (S.) 67; with Katherine Moore:
A five-judge Court of Appeal, presided over by the Lord Chief Justice, held that the statutory guidance, contained in Chapter 7 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, for determining the minimum term to be served on a mandatory life sentence in transitional periods should not lead to increased minimum terms in the majority of cases.
R v Ralph (29.11.2000; Court of Appeal - Criminal Division) 2000 WL 1791598
The deceased had been attacked by the appellant and another man, F. It emerged during the trial that the only involvement of the appellant was to deliver a number of kicks to the area of the deceased's stomach and chest after F had caused serious injury to him. The pathologist could find no evidence of injury resulting from those kicks, and those kicks certainly did not cause death. It was submitted on behalf of the appellant that the trial judge omitted to direct the jury, until after such time as it was too late, as to the circumstances in which F could be convicted of murder and R only of manslaughter. Thus the defence argued there was a real risk that the jury had reached a verdict which was not in accordance with the evidence as they had found it to be and therefore the conviction for murder was unsafe. The Court of Appeal held that a direction as to the circumstances where manslaughter could be found in a murder trial, given well after the jury had retired, and just as they were about to present their verdict, did not render a conviction for murder unsafe.
