Evie Snow secures a successful appeal against conviction.

Evie successfully represented a private chauffeur and taxi driver in his appeal against conviction for an offence of using a mobile phone whilst driving. Evie’s client accepted that he had been on the phone to the AA when stopped, having made this call using his hands-free setup. The issue was therefore whether he was holding the phone at the time, which he strongly denied.

Thanks to her persistence, Evie was able to obtain Body-Worn Video footage from the police which had been available at first instance but never played in open court. This clearly showed one traffic officer telling others in the car he had seen the defendant on his phone after a very brief drive-by. The defence case was that this first purported sighting was a mistake due to the positioning of the phone on its magnetic holder and the car’s tinted window. This officer’s comment then contaminated the other officer’s evidence.

Through Evie’s careful cross-examination, the second traffic officer agreed his partner’s comment had influenced what he expected to see at the stop. Evie also identified several inconsistencies as to where each officer believed they had seen the phone. The Court could not therefore be sure that either officer had in fact seen Evie’s client holding his phone at the relevant time and so the appeal was allowed.

Evie undertook this appeal pro bono through Advocate.