Wed, 12 Sep 2018
No5 Barristers’ Chambers’ crime specialist Jonas Hankin QC has secured a murder conviction for the sexually-motivated killing of 33-year-old Charlotte Teeling.
Richard Bailey, 41, was handed a life sentence with a minimum 29-year jail term for the murder of the mother-of-two. Unemployed Bailey, who was arrested in Coventry earlier this year, had denied charges of murder and manslaughter.
Judge Patrick Thomas QC was told Bailey had 171 previous convictions, including a string of violent offences committed solely against women.
Bailey, who was on licence at the time of the killing, claimed he had accidentally caused Miss Teeling’s death during ‘rough sex’ at his flat at supported accommodation in Cooksey Lane, Kingstanding, Birmingham.
However, jurors at Birmingham Crown Court deliberated for one hour and 15 minutes before unanimously convicting Bailey of murder. The jury accepted that Bailey intended to kill or cause serious harm to Teeling, who sustained injuries to her neck and mouth as well as a bone fracture near the base of her tongue.
During the four-week trial, the jury heard that Miss Teeling, who had lived on the Isle of Wight and also at a women's refuge in Worcester, was strangled and smothered during sex, and pornography was found scattered near her body.
The court was told Teeling met Bailey shortly after leaving a nightclub in Birmingham at about 5am on 23 February. Her body was found a week later. After killing her, Bailey also used Teeling’s bank card.
To read more about this case, please visit: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/12/richard-bailey-charlotte-teeling-strangled-during-sex-29-year-jail-term
Jonas Hankin QC is a member of the Criminal Law Group at No5 Chambers. To view his profile visit https://www.no5.com/barristers/barrister-details/459-jonas-hankin-qc/
