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- 24th March 2010
A police officer who refused a trainee solicitor permission to attend an interview with a murderer acted irrationally, said Northern Ireland’s High Court.
As we reported here last month, Paul Campbell applied for a judicial review into the police’s decision to exclude him even though he was with his training principal. He argued that he had a legal entitlement to be there as part of his training.
The judge said: “Incidents of this kind, if repeated, have the capacity to corrode the professional relationship which must underpin the interactions between the solicitor and the police who each discharge important duties in the public interest.” He added that it was not in the public interest for a pupil solicitor to be excluded from an interview on “the whim” of the custody sergeant.
Campbell had already attended four interviews with the murder suspect, an 18-year woman who was allegedly involved with the murder of a Polish man. He was told that his exclusion was on the basis that he was unqualified lawyer and therefore not entitled to be present under Police and Criminal Evidence Act rules.
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