Killer Brady loses legal bid to choose his own lawyer
MOORS Murderer Ian Brady has been refused permission to launch a “totally unique” High Court fight for the right to have the lawyer of his choice representing him at a tribunal.
Brady applied for the go-ahead to challenge a bar on solicitor-advocate Robin Makin receiving a publicly funded contract to put his latest case before the Mental Health Review Tribunal (MHRT).
Mr Justice Morris, sitting in London, dismissed the application, saying it had “no realistic prospect of success”.
The serial killer (79), who now uses the name Ian Stewart-Brady, is a patient at Ashworth Hospital on Merseyside.
Brady and Myra Hindley, who died in prison in 2002, tortured and murdered five children in the 1960s.
Brady last went before the Mental Health Review Tribunal (MHRT) in 2013 and asked for a move to a Scottish prison so he cannot be force-fed — as he can inhospital—andwherehecould be allowed to die if he wishes.
His request was rejected after Ashworth medical experts said he had chronic mental illness and needed continued care in hospital.
A further review was due in September last year, but Brady refused to take part without Mr Makin.
Mr Makin is currently barred from acting as Brady’s publicly funded legal representative because his solicitors’ firm, E Rex Makin & Co, is not a member of the Law Society’s mental health panel.
Under legal aid rules, only members are entitled to a publicly-funded contract in the mental health law category.
Brady’s legal team argued before Mr Justice Morris that the Lord Chancellor, Liz Truss, has power to intervene and protect his human rights and ensure he is represented by the lawyer of his choice.
His barrister Philip Engelman argued Ms Truss had unlawfully fettered her discretion by failing to act in what the tribunal itself had described as a “totally unique” case.
But yesterday Mr Justice Morris ruled that all grounds of challenge were “unfounded and unarguable”.