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Education

1974 BA Hons (SOAS)

Practice

Specialist criminal defence practice with wide experience of defending the most serious offences, including being instructed to lead for the defence.

Defending in both notable cases and the more mundane. Numerous GBH, drug trafficking, rape, fraud, murder, and armed robbery cases. His history includes violent strikes, anti-war protests, and working before tribunals at Broadmoor Special Hospital. Commonly instructed to represent mentally disordered defendants.

Environmental defences developed as an aside to his mainstream practice. Typically for defendants and organisations used to civil courts, cases and solicitors, when faced with the very different process of running a criminal court defence. For example, involving the prejudicial attitudes to waste and its disposal.

Chester Beyts is associated with the following areas of expertise:

Crime
General Fraud

Cases

Crime

  • R v Sherafatmand – illicit supply of medicines to patients in the U.K. and abroad.
  • R –v- Saxon - Leading junior. Multiple obtainings of container of goods from various docks by shipping agents and lorry drivers by fraudulently producing fake document.
  • R –v- Jackman - tobacco importations, long established & multi-million pound fraud on the revenue.
  • R –v- Haylett - lorry driver – multimillion pound drugs importation.
  • R –v Kpodo -  large scale theft by bank staff.
  • R –v-Wilson -  corruption of bank staff by customer, theft of bank monies.
  • R v Amos – multiple baby battering (GBH) by father.
  • R v Attram – death in care home – defending the manager.
  • R v Morgan – historic rapes – unusually, the defendant only 15 at offences, 42 now.  Third attempt at prosecution – decades of pursuit by one officer.
  • R v Allen - leading junior – murder – provocation.
  • R –v- Jawanda - murder of prostitute - wholly circumstantial evidence
  • R –v- Brook - gangland armed robbery where police were aware of real offender, police corruption in protecting him.
  • R –v- Crowley - multiple armed robberies by escapee.
  • R –v- Turner - murder by arson, case based on forensic links.
  • R –v- Garner - cell-site analysis – murder.
  • R –v- Waterman – death by dangerous driving, defendant accused of racing.
  • R v Nelson - blackmail of School Master over sex scandal 25 years before, defence of abuse of process.
  • R –v- Cartwright - multiple rapes on ex wife, appeal against conviction & Attorney Generals reference on sentence.
  • R-v- Harris - serious injuries from sexual offences, akin to GBH in response to an extra marital affair.
  • R v L (15 year old) - multiple rapes of siblings.
  • R v Herman – terminally ill patient taking doctor hostage for lack of pain-relief.
  • R –v- Brown – RAF letter-bomb hoaxes – disgruntled personnel
  • R –v- Abdullah - Finsbury Park Mosque – young radicals – burglary & assault.
  • R v Huber - Fathers 4 Justice protest case– conspiracy to disrupt transport/road network.

Proceeds of Crime Act

  • R –v- Hilton - Money laundering of funds obtained as a result of identity theft by bank staff, including complex confiscation proceedings.
  • R –v- Plume - confiscation in respect of legitimate business consequent on drug trafficking
  • R –v- Moreno - confiscation & cocaine distribution

Fraud and Financial Regulation

  • R –v- Yeye - credit card manufacturing system
  • R –v- Speyer – Leading junior for first defendant in the case of a worldwide forged passport network, involving a long established system of buying passports in remote countries, forging visas and distributing them to affluent émigrés.
  • R –v- Morgan - school treasurer’, embezzlement over many years
  • R –v- Dorey - D.T.I. prosecution of bankrupt hiding funds abroad
  • R –v- Hussain – Leading junior for the defence in a credit card manufacturing & distribution network.
  • Operation Lizard – Pantiru – representing the first defendant in respect of a fake cash machine factory & identity theft conspiracy.
  • R –v- Mulley - identity theft by bank staff, involving computerised fraud and the planting of evidence by investigators.

Health and Safety

  • R –v- Heinsen – Health & Safety Executive prosecution over workplace death.

Reported Cases

  • R v Cartwright – conviction – rape – statutory interpretation.
  • R v Downie (Steven)– Indeterminate Sentences for the Protection of the Public
  • R v Alobaydi – Appeal against conviction – non-disclosure.
  • R v Madwick – disparity in sentencing.
  • Attorney General's Reference sub nom R v Awuah (Isac) – armed robbery & false imprisonment not unduly lenient.
  • R v Happer (James Robert) blackmail - sentence.
  • R v Duffy (Nicholas Thomas) - firearms sentence.
  • R v Pinnock (O’Neil Omar) murder – conviction overturned.
  • (incidental old case - R v Aramah – drug sentencing guidelines)

Associated Work

Professional Memberships

  • Member of the Criminal bar Association.
  • Eligible defence counsel at the International Criminal Court
  • United Kingdom Environmental Law Association (UKELA) 

Contact

T. 020 7067 1500

E. cbeyts@25bedfordrow.com