The trial in which Richard Christie KC served as leading defence counsel for the first defendant, Jonathan Rees, has been dramatized into a the compelling seven-part ITV series, The Hack. The series, which was produced by the same team that created “Mr Bates vs Post Office”, revisits the unsolved murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan who received an axe to the head in a South London Car park in 1987 and the complex web of investigations that followed, all set against the backdrop of the infamous phone-hacking scandal involving The News of the World.
The case is said to have involved the longest pre-trial legal arguments in the history of English Criminal Law. Richard’s client was acquitted of the murder and received substantial damages.
After the defendants were acquitted, Mr. Justice Maddison, the trial Judge said:
“In all the years that I have been a judge, and there have been many of them, I have never come across a case in which there have been so many issues or such complex issues to be resolved before a trial could even get underway. And I anticipate that the combined experience of counsel, and it is very considerable combined experience, has never come across a case of this kind.”
…My firm view is that the legal representatives for all the defendants, faced with a mammoth task, have responded magnificently to it. And the quality of the written and oral submissions that I have received has been of the highest quality. The industry and the tenacity which has been shown by the defence teams is to be commended and the defendants will leave court knowing, if they did not already and I think they must have known before, that they have been very well served…Mr. Christie, if I may say so, it is obvious from the detail and quality of your submissions that you have been investing a huge amount of effort into this.”
This marks the second television production to explore the case, following Channel 4’s documentary Death in the Car Park and stars David Tennant, Toby Jones, Robert Carlyle and Dougray Scott. It has also been the subject of a no.1 rated Podcast.