Lord Janner’s sex abuse case dropped
Lord Janner arrives home in Muswell Hill after a court appearance last year Picture: PA/Jonathan Brady. - Credit: PA Wire/PA Images
Greville Janner’s child sex abuse case has been formally dropped in light of the 87-year-old’s death.
Lord Janner leaves a court appearance by car Picture: PA/Anthony Devlin. - Credit: PA Wire/PA Images
Legal proceedings were left in limbo last month following the announcement that the elderly peer had died.
This morning, prosecutor Richard Whittam QC told trial judge Mr Justice Openshaw that the Crown would not go ahead with the planned trial of facts at the Old Bailey in April.
Lord Janner, whose former home in West Heath Road, Hampstead, was raided in 2013 in relation to the allegations, was charged with 22 sexual offences dating back to the 1960s against nine alleged victims, who were mostly under 16 at the time.
He had already been declared unfit to stand trial due to his “deteriorating and irreversible” dementia.
The former MP, who lived in Muswell Hill until his death in December, had been suffering from dementia .
During the short hearing at the Old Bailey, Mr Whittam revealed that, at the time of Janner’s death on December 19, the prosecution had an application pending to introduce a second tranche of charges.
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Meanwhile, the defence were in the process of trying to get the case halted due to an “abuse of process”, he said.
Announcing the decision not to proceed with the case, he told the senior judge, Mr Justice Openshaw, that a copy of the peer’s death certificate had been produced for the court file.
The judge said: “There is nothing more to be said. That’s the end of the proceedings, that the defendant is dead.”
