Henry Green QC has been a member of chambers since 1964 and, after half a century at the Bar, has now retired. He was involved in a very broad spectrum of criminal cases, whether as a junior or leading counsel.
Henry prosecuted many cases over the years for the Director of Public Prosecutions, HM Revenue & Customs (and in its subsequent guises) and the Crown Prosecution Service. Before the CPS came into existence, he was regularly instructed on behalf of the Metropolitan Police and various County Prosecuting Authorities.
As a junior, he was led in a number of high profile cases, including the first aircraft hijacking case and R v Berry (80 Cr App R 98), a decision of the House of Lords on the true construction of 'lawful object' in section 4(1) of the Explosive Substances Act 1883.
Throughout his career, Henry also appeared as defence counsel in a wide range of cases, concerning murder, rape, drug trafficking, kidnapping and fraud. He was junior counsel in one of the last cases of murder at the Central Criminal Court when the death sentence was passed. He was one of the junior counsel in the case of Harry Roberts and ors (1967), in which three police officers were shot dead outside Wormwood Scribs prison. Harry Roberts is still in prison.
In 1997/8, Henry sucessfully prosecuted Terry Ramsden in his widely publicised trial for fraud, brought by the Serious Fraud Office. More recent work included trials and advice in respect of charges for murder, sexual offences, offences against the person and fraud.
Henry Green sat as an Assistant Recorder and Recorder of the Crown Court for some 17 years.
Notable Case
R v Taylor (13.09.2003, The Times, 8 October 2003 [2003] EWCA Crim 2447, Court of Appeal - Criminal Division): Julie Taylor was given a life sentence for killing her husband, Tony Honisett. Mrs Taylor, who fatally stabbed her husband, had a low IQ, suffered from depression and claimed that her husband had subjected her to violence. At the trial the defences of accident, self defence, diminished responsibility and provocation were raised. In this appeal, the defence argued that the trial judge had not given a clear direction on provocation in that he had failed to leave the right questions to the jury and failed to identify what it was that may have triggered the defendant’s loss of self control. It was held that the judge had set out the elements of provocation sufficiently clearly and had identified the relevant evidence. Taking the totality of the defences together, provocation had been less important than the main issue of diminished responsibility and the judge could not be faulted for only mentioning it at one point in the summing up.
