Andrew Morris

Andrew is a highly regarded criminal advocate with extensive experience in representing defendants charged with serious offences in the Crown Court and Court of Appeal. Andrew is regularly instructed in terrorism cases and has appeared as a junior alone and leading junior in such cases. He has successfully defended a client in a multi handed terrorism trial in which the main defendant was found guilty of preparatory terrorist acts and in a case involving national security in which a defendant was acquitted of dissemination of terrorist material. He has acted as junior alone in the Court of Appeal in the recent cases of AA [2019] EWCA Crim 1307 and Grimwood [2021] EWCA Crim 8 where multiple convictions for historic offences were overturned as a result of errors in summing up and wrongly admitted bad character evidence. He has also acted as junior alone in HNF[2022] EWCA Crim 859 in which a conviction for being concerned in the supply of class a drugs was quashed on the grounds that the Jury had been misdirected on an element of the defence of Modern Slavery under s45(4) Modern Slavery Act 2015 as it relates to persons under the age of 18. He has also appeared before the Divisional Court in a leading case stated appeal on police powers of arrest Ali v DPP [2009] EWHC 3353 (Admin) in which the Court quashed convictions on the grounds of errors of law. In 2013 he was led junior in a landmark case of R-v- G [2012] EWCA Crim 1756 in which convictions were overturned and which is now a leading case on the law on half time submissions in the Crown Court. In R-v- DA [2022] Andrew appeared as junior alone at the Central Criminal Court where he was successful in a half time submission on a charge of manslaughter and achieved not guilty verdict for an offence of assisting an offender. Andrew is also instructed in cases of alleged misuse of police powers of arrest and detention and recently in R-v- KD [2022] where he was successful in a trial where the issues concerned the misuse of police powers of stop and search under S23 Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, reasonable force and the freedom of expression under Article 10 of European Convention of Human Rights. Andrew is a media contributor and an advocacy trainer for the Law Society. He has written journal articles on the issue of disclosure in the Crown Courts and also regularly trains advocates in cross examination of vulnerable witnesses. He has been a member of the Law Society Advocacy Advisory committee for a number of years and participated in advocacy round tables and media appearances.