Police and lawyers criticised after three-year wait for justice in stolen car case

Police and lawyers accused by judge of ‘incompetence’ over stalled action
Delays: legal worker Talisha Mathurin
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Police and lawyers have come under fire from a judge for a “sorry tale of incompetence” after a legal worker who was accused of driving a stolen Range Rover had to wait more than three years to face justice.

Talisha Mathurin, 30, first fell under suspicion in September 2016 but she had to wait until April last year to be told that she would face a criminal charge. Inner London crown court heard the case stalled due to “systemic and personal failures” within the Met Police, its forensic examiners and independent lawyers, while Mathurin was “released under investigation” and forced to wait years to hear her fate.

Recorder Stephen Phillips QC laid bare the failings in a judgment this week, as he was urged to throw the entire case out as an abuse of process.

The increasing reliance by police of releasing suspects under investigation (RUI)—with no time limit — instead of on bail has come under fire as the Government considers reforming the entire system.

Caroline Goodwin QC, chair of the Criminal Bar Association, has said victims, witnesses, and defendants are now facing long delays for justice because of a “lethal cocktail” of RUI, cuts to court sitting days, and courthouses being closed altogether.

Outlining what went wrong in Mathurin’s case, Mr Phillips said she was stopped in the car in September 2016 and handed her phone to police in December of that year.

Due to her profession as a paralegal, police were not allowed to look at the phone themselves and an independent lawyer had to analyse the handset as it may have contained legally privileged material. “What followed is a sorry tale of incompetence,” said the judge.

“Counsel originally instructed did little or nothing to look at the digital materials she was sent.

How the Standard has reported on a struggling system

“That led to a delay until the beginning of 2018, after which further privileged materials on the phone were then discovered. These were sent to new counsel in a format that he was unable to open, before being sent to yet further counsel due to his unavailability.

“Initially she, too, was unable to access the materials, apparently only having access to an incompatible laptop.”

In April 2018, Mathurin emailed the officer in the case to check on its progress, saying she was “unable to move on with her life without a formal decision as to whether or not to charge her”.

Her career in the legal sector had ground to a halt when she was arrested and released under investigation. But she was then surprised to be told by the officer that he was “no longer dealing with her case” and had no idea who had taken over.

Mathurin, through solicitors, threatened to bring a judicial review of the police investigation as it continued to drag on, and in November 2018 she was finally questioned about the contents of her mobile phone and papers were sent to the CPS. “Incredibly they were sent to the wrong department and, I am told, just ‘sat on the system’,” said the judge.

Taken from the Evening Standard

“This went undetected until early January 2019.” Mathurin was charged with handling stolen goods in April 2019 and then faced a further 10 months of waiting for her case to come to trial last week.

The Range Rover Mathurin was caught driving was part of a wider stolen car ring, led by her boyfriend Marvin Mobio. Her barrister Chris Meredith, pointed out that Mobio had been charged, convicted, jailed, and had served his sentence in the time it took for police and the CPS to decide whether Mathurin would face the courts. “She has been the victim of an inept and incompetent investigation characterised by failure and delay,” he said. Prosecutor Daniel Fugallo accepted the delays had been “unjustifiable”.

The judge ruled he did not have enough grounds to throw out the entire case, but gave Mathurin just a year-long conditional discharge when she pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of using criminal property at the start of her trial. In a statement, the Met said delays with analysing her phone were due to the need to bring in independent counsel to view the legally privileged material and a “huge volume of data” had to be “carefully reviewed” including over 80,000 messages and in excess of 7,000 images.

The force said: “Without the delay caused by the legally privileged material, in all likelihood Mathurin would have stood trial with the three people arrested at the same time as her.”

The CPS said it first had contact with the case in December 2018, and a charging decision was made in April the next year. The Home Office is now considering extending the legal time limits for suspects to be bailed in a bid to increase its use and scale back the use of RUI.

Hold-ups ‘may count as mitigating factor’

Criminals are given reduced sentences when they can show a judge their case has been “unduly delayed” and they are not to blame. 

The Court of Appeal said in 2018 that “delay may count as a mitigating factor”, with article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights ensuring that justice is carried out in a reasonable timescale. At Inner London crown court last week, two defendants received lesser sentences after waiting years. Justin Lowdon stole £175,000 of mobile phones from a City law firm to feed a gambling habit. Recorder Stephen Phillips QC passed a two-year suspended sentence, conceding: “The fact that it has taken three years to come to court must be taken into account”. 

IT manager Anthony Murrell held his hands up to a £580,000 fraud in summer 2017, but he was not charged until December last year. Judge Usha Karu cut eight months from his jail term after hearing he had paid back his ill-gotten gains and believed the matter may have been closed before he was brought to justice.

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