Thread by @BarristerSecret

Two million people will have read the Mail’s ill-informed diatribe against legal aid lawyers in today’s paper.

Please share with them this important reply by @TuckersLaw. tuckerssolicitors.com/response-to-th…

Let’s be clear - the cowardice in being responsible for a young woman’s death and fleeing to evade justice is repugnant. He deserves - and will receive - suitably condign punishment when he’s caught (and he will be).

But this has nothing to do with legal aid.

The Court of Appeal has only granted legal aid and given permission to appeal against the conviction because it believes that there are arguable grounds that the conviction is unsafe.

Nobody - even people on the run - should be unsafely convicted.

The conviction may be upheld, of course. The Court has only granted *permission* (or “leave”) to appeal. That is just the first hurdle. The appellant, or more accurately his lawyers, must convince three judges at the Court of Appeal that the conviction is unsafe.

Leave is rarely granted. Around one in ten applications for leave to appeal against conviction result in leave being granted. Of those, most (around 2/3) still end up failing at a full appeal hearing:

This is the context that a responsible news report should be giving you. Not an anonymous Twitter rabbit pretending to be a barrister.