Peter Wilcock KC

Practice Areas

Inquests and Public Inquiries

Criminal Law

Career

Peter’s busy and diverse practice consists of high-profile inquiry and inquest work and criminal trial and appellate cases. He has also sat as a Mental Health Review Tribunal Judge for over 20 years.

Peter’s Inquests have included the Hillsborough Inquests, in which Peter represented seven families who lost loved ones during the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster and led the questioning on the topics of the design of Hillsborough stadium, the decision to open the stadium gates, and the subsequent police cover-up on behalf of the 77 families represented by the Hillsborough family Support Group. He has appeared as junior counsel for Guiseppe Conlon in the 1993 May Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the convictions arising out of the 1974 bomb attacks in Guildford and Woolwich. Since 2023, he has been involved in the ongoing Covid Inquiry, in which he jointly leads a team of two KC’s and five junior counsel representing Northern Irish families who lost loved ones in the Covid pandemic.

Other inquests in which Peter has appeared have involved deaths in prisons, psychiatric hospitals, and as a result of police shootings and in the context of police activity.

Peter’s criminal trial work continues to involve serious crime of all types, including murder (whether planned, spontaneous, or domestic and including cases involving complex scientific or evidential issues), serious sexual offences, organised crime and fraud. Peter regularly appears in the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) and has appeared in both the House of Lords and Supreme Court. Many of Peter’s cases have been and continue to be well-publicised, and his appellate practice still involves regular second opinion work. He has an enviable success rate of persuading the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) both to refer cases back to the Court of Appeal and to then quash conviction, including Hallam (2012), Nealon (2014), Lalchan (2022), and Layden (2023). Further details of these cases can be found below in the Specialist Areas section under Criminal Appeals.

Professional Memberships

· Criminal Bar Association

· Society of Labour Lawyers

· Criminal Appeal Lawyers Association (CALA)

· INQUEST

Publications

Member of 2010 Law Commission working party on Unfitness to plead—consultation paper No 197.

‘A timely reminder’, New Law Journal, 2008.

‘Fresh Evidence in Criminal Appeals—Pendleton revisited’, Archbold News, December 2006.

Article on the defence of provocation, Solicitors Journal, May 2006.

‘Criminal Justice Act 2003’, New Law Journal, 2004.

‘Fresh Evidence in the Court of Appeal; Pendleton—a Case Note’, New Law Journal, 2002.

‘Fitness to Plead Procedure: An adequate Protection?’, New Law Journal, 439.

‘Crime & Disorder Act’, LAG, January 1999.

Personal

Peter has also been called to the Bar in Northern Ireland. He studied law at the LSE where, following completion of his degree, he was the general secretary of the Student Union. He then joined Tooks Chambers, where he practised for 24 years before joining Garden Court in 2013.

Since 2003, Peter has been a part-time tribunal judge on the Mental Health Review Tribunal. He was appointed as an appraiser for Tribunals Service (Mental Health) in October 2009 and is on the Advisory Group of the Centre for Criminal Appeals.

Peter has provided Legal Advice in relation to Courtroom scenes for the BBC series Silent Witness and Rillington Place.

Education