Man jailed over cocaine plot wins right to appeal conviction

A MAN jailed for his part in a major drugs plot has won the right to appeal his conviction.

Lawyers for Lee Paul Kelly say his defence team were not given the chance to cross-examine computer experts over how they got hold of messages on his locked phone during his trial. If they were given that right, they could have proved the evidence was inadmissible, a senior appeal judge said yesterday.

Lord Justice Davis granted the right to appeal, saying every defendant has the right to a ‘fair trial’ at the hearing at London’s Appeal Court. He said it was ‘arguable’ that the expert should have been required to ‘explain the exact chain and methodology’ used.

The 37-year-old was arrested in a car in 2014, and a small quantity of cocaine and two mobile phones were seized by police at the scene. During the trial, computer experts said they extracted encrypted messages from one of the phones, linking Kelly to a major drugs conspiracy.

Kelly was jailed for nine years for conspiracy to supply cocaine and cannabis following a trial at Manchester Crown Court in October 2016.

But lawyers for Kelly, of Eastgate, Whitworth, say his defence team should have been allowed to challenge the methods used to examine the phone during the trial.

If that happened, defence lawyers could have argued that the evidence was inadmissible – meaning it wasn’t valid.