Rachel Brand KC

Practice Areas

Rachel is an extremely experienced and accomplished advocate with 25 years as a silk specialising in homicide cases. Instructions have included killing by shooting, stabbing, blunt force trauma with various weapons including motor vehicles, strangulation/asphyxia, drowning, arson including deliberate ignition of accelerant thrown onto victim. The factual background of those cases is too diverse to list (and too numerous), but has included organised crime, murder for gain, public disorder, alcohol or drug-fuelled arguments, domestic abuse, relationship breakdown, child abuse, sexual or sadistic motives, and homicide committed by those who were mentally unwell.

Rachel has substantial experience of cases involving the death of infants and young children, and the complex medical issues in such cases, particularly traumatic brain injury.

She is frequently instructed to represent vulnerable defendants, including those with a history of mental illness or significant learning disability, in murder trials involving issues of diminished responsibility or with other complex psychiatric issues.

Rachel is often instructed to represent or prosecute very young defendants charged with murder – including representing one who was only 12 years old at the time of the killing.

Rachel has particular expertise in allegations of rape and other serious sexual offences, and other cases involving DNA profiling evidence (appeared, as a junior, in R v Doheny and Adams 1997, leading case on statistical interpretation of DNA evidence). Instructions to prosecute have included substantial trials involving historic allegations of sexual offences, arising from large-scale police inquiries into local authority care homes.

Some of Rachel’s previous instructions include:

• Serving police officer who had committed serious sexual offences (historic).

• A man who used his vehicle as a weapon, causing catastrophic injuries to his ex-partner’s father, rendering him paraplegic.

• Fraud by NHS dentists (defending).

By its nature, much of this caseload has attracted national media attention.

Examples of murder and manslaughter cases include :

Defence:

• Represented one of two defendants acquitted of the murder of Nicola Payne, a young woman who went missing in Coventry in 1991.

• One of two defendants charged with murder, each blaming the other: acquitted, whilst co-defendant convicted of murder.

• A woman charged (with her partner) with the murder of a young woman in the home all three of them shared.

• One of two defendants charged with murder following the stabbing of a man in Coventry: acquitted.

• Represented a woman acquitted of murder (who had pleaded guilty to manslaughter) in relation to the death of a man attacked in the street in Stratford-on-Avon, by 4 assailants.

• A woman charged with attempted murder of her 6 day old infant daughter by placing her into a rubbish chute: the defendant was affected by ‘post-partum psychosis’.

• Various (separate) cases of defendants charged with the murder of infants and young children, or with causing or allowing the death of young children.

• A woman convicted (with her partner) of gross negligence manslaughter when their infant child drowned in a bath, having been left unattended.

• One of two defendants acquitted of murder on the Judge’s direction following argument on causation where there had been delayed death following assault and brain injury.

• One of eight defendants acquitted of charges of murder, in relation to an incident when 3 men were struck by a car (during the riots in Birmingham in 2011).

• A defendant charged with the murder of 3 men in the 1990’s, unfit to be tried in the normal way therefore trial of whether he ‘did the acts’.

• One of three defendants charged with the (financially motivated) murder of an elderly disabled man in his own home.

• Several (separate cases) of alleged ‘contract’ or ‘execution’ murders (shootings).

• A man who lured a taxi driver to a country lane, then stabbed and killed him during a bungled attempted robbery.

• A defendant who killed an elderly couple in their own home.

• A 19 year old defendant charged with the murder of a shopkeeper during the course of a robbery.

• A defendant who murdered his elderly aunt and uncle.

• A woman who killed her 6 year old daughter (manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility), including successful appeal against sentence of IPP.

• Murder of several victims by setting fire to a hotel.

• An 18 year old defendant charged with murdering his mother, a case with complex psychiatric issues.

• A middle-aged woman charged with the murder of her elderly mother-in-law.

Prosecution

• Two separate cases of serving prisoners (life sentence for murder) who murdered another inmate.

• A man who strangled and murdered his wife and attempted to murder his two young children.

• Murder, a shooting inside a Black Country nightclub.

• A man who stabbed and killed his partner in full view of their two young children, during an acute psychotic episode of his established mental illness.

• 5 defendants, murder (petrol thrown and ignited), conspiracy to murder and perverting the course of justice.

• A defendant who murdered his adult daughter by strangulation.

• A serving police officer who murdered his partner.

• A defendant who killed his infant son.

• A man who murdered a young woman in her own home.

Professional Memberships

Rachel is a Greys Inn Bencher