Nigel Power KC is a specialist criminal barrister who also practises in family and regulatory work. He has been described in Chambers and Partners Guide to the Bar in the following way: "He's an excellent barrister; he's massively experienced and also thoroughly likeable, which is important to making client relationships work."
Background and Expertise
Since taking silk in 2010, the majority of his work has been in murder cases, but he has also been instructed in cases involving fraud, confiscation, drugs and guns conspiracies and has considerable experience in cases of gross negligence manslaughter cases representing carers.
Nigel is currently involved in a drugs trial in Manchester Crown Court that is expected to last until March 2023. He is nevertheless able to accept advisory instructions in the meantime. His other current workload involves advising a number of clients, pre and post charge in cases involving Encrochat evidence, and he has successfully resisted a number of applications for production orders made by the police investigating alleged fraud at Liverpool City Council.
In 2022 he represented two young defendants separately in murder trials and he is also advising pre-charge in three large scale fraud/misconduct cases.
In 2021 he appeared for the first defendant, Kyle Sanders, in an eight-handed murder trial where the deceased was shot dead. Despite Mr Sanders being first named on the indictment and alleged to be the organiser of a robbery which led to the fatal shooting, Mr Sanders was acquitted of murder and convicted of manslaughter. He prosecuted Christopher Guest More for the drug-related torture and murder of Brian Waters in 2003 (convicted after a retrial) and represented a 17 year-old-defendant tried for s18 assault, murder and robbery in a cut-throat defence; he was acquitted of murder but convicted of s20 assault and manslaughter.
In 2020 he appeared in a number of murder trials and recently successfully resisted a prosecution appeal against a successful submission of no case in a murder trial in Preston (report here). In 2019 he secured the acquittal of Lee Blowes, who was alleged to have conspired to kill Blake Brown in a gangland execution (report here) and represented Lorraine Khan, who was acquitted of gross negligence manslaughter. In 2018 he appeared in two high-profile murder trials in Liverpool and successfully prosecuted Darren McKie, an inspector in the Greater Manchester Police, for the murder of his wife, also a police officer (see here).
In family work in 2018 he appeared for the maternal grandmother who was completely exonerated in the two week "finding of fact" baby-shaking hearing in Medway CC v K. More recently he appeared in December 2020 for an Albanian mother in a finding of fact hearing involving allegations of modern slavery and forced prostitution.
Nigel is licensed to accept public access instructions directly from the public and regularly accepts privately paid as well as legally aided instructions.
He also practises from 7 Harrington Street Chambers in Liverpool. Fuller information about his work can be found here.
Notable Cases
R v LH, 2013
Represented the leading defendant in “Wales’ Biggest Ever Fraud” which involved more than 320,000 pages of material.
R v Phillip Dennett, 2012
Ten-week “Boiler-Room Fraud” which was highly publicised because the first defendant was Lord Hugh Rodley, aka “The Lord of Fraud”. Shares worth more than £14m were sold in companies that did not trade in any meaningful sense. Nigel used defence expert handwriting evidence and cross-examination of the prosecution’s expert chartered accountant during the trial to ensure that although Mr Dennett was the director of the two principal companies operating the frauds and had control of the bank accounts, he was the only one of the five on trial to be acquitted of conspiracy to defraud and fraudulent trading; this was despite the fact that he had given undertakings not to act as a Director during the concurrent investigation by Companies House.
Bribery and CorruptionR v H, 2020
Defendant was one of four men accused of kidnapping two teenagers and extracting information from them which led to the fatal shooting of Stephen Maguire in Southport. (Defending)
Report here
R v H, 2020
Defendant acquitted of murder and arson with intent to endanger life; submission of no case to answer succeeded and prosecution appeal resisted. (Defending)
Report here
R v L, 2020
Polish National accused of conspiring to to rob and murdering a former friend, travelling from Southampton to Wakefield with four others in order to do so. (Defending)
Report here
R v C, 2020
Polish National accused of murdering his Polish girlfriend in their home while her daughter was in the next door bedroom, required sensitive cross-examination of her under the section 28 procedure. (Defending)
R v K, 2019
65-year-old defendant charged with the manslaughter by gross negligence of her husband; the prosecution accepted a plea to neglect after their expert geriatrician accepted that she could no longer say that she was objective; suspended sentence of imprisonment followed. (Defending)
Report here
R v W & R, 2019
Shooting of a 17 year old boy on a motorbike and associated other serious offending. (Prosecuting)
Report here
R v B, 2019
Gross negligence manslaughter by a carer who failed to check whether the deceased had returned from hospital; she then starved to death. (Defending)
Report here
R v k, 2018
A troubling case involving allegations of manslaughter, causing or allowing a child to die and cruelty. (Defending)
Report here
R v G, 2018
Represented the lead defendant in the drug-based kidnapping, torture and murder of Joseph McKeever, whose body was found completely burnt in a car in Everton; the case involved complex scientific and phone evidence and was a "cut-throat". (Defending)
Report here
R v E, 2017
Represented a defendant charged with three others of murdering a rival drug dealer in Rhyl. Despite admitting being a career drug dealer and getting out of a car with the co-accused, two of whom had knives and stabbed the three rivals in a van, the defendant was acquitted of two section 18 assaults upon 2 of the men and was acquitted of murder but convicted of manslaughter in relation to the front passenger who was stabbed 22 times. (Defending)
R v D, 2016
R v S, 2015
Defendant was accused of murdering an off-duty police officer and seriously assaulting his two colleagues. The defendant, a professional football coach in the USA, was acquitted of all charges. (Defending)
R v H, 2015
Defendant was accused of luring a drug dealer to an ambush where he was stabbed to death by other drug dealers. The case involved complex arguments about withdrawal from joint enterprise and bad character and was one of a large number of conjoined appeals following the Supreme Court ruling in Jogee. (Defending)
R v L-M, 2013
Defendant alleged to be part of a wide-ranging gangland joint enterprise to kill four men in a car on a night-club car park in Nottingham. He was acquitted of the single murder and three attempted murder charges that he faced. (Defending)
R v S, 2012/2013
12 -week murder trial in which this first defendant on the indictment was alleged to have organised the robbery and killing of her partner in order to take £40,000 of his drug trafficking proceeeds. (Defending)
R v B, 2012
The Defendant was charged with the murder of a sex worker in 2005 in Liverpool. The case involved live evidence from 6 experts and involved standard SGM+, Low Template, SenCE, Y-STR and Identifiler DNA and the statistical analysis of the evidence by David Balding, Professor of Genetical Statistics at UCL. (Prosecuting)
R v M, 2010
The Defendant, a nurse in Southport, raped then murdered his wife on the eve of their final ancillary relief hearing. He then staged a car accident and pretended that the deceased was still alive, and made concerned phone calls to friends and family. There was a very large amount of controversial bad character evidence adduced through hearsay. The case attracted considerable local and national press interest. (Prosecuting)
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Achievements
- Nigel is a keen footballer, cricketer and cyclist and a season ticket holder at Liverpool FC.