Nigel Power KC is a specialist criminal and family barrister In the 2016 Chambers and Partners Guide to the Bar, he was described in the following way: “He’s an excellent barrister; he’s massively experienced and also thoroughly likeable, which is important to making client relationships work.” Nigel is a member of the Bar of England and Wales but has been licensed to conduct a number of cases in the Isle of Man and has been called to the bar of Northern Ireland for bars for specific cases.
Nigel has recently represented the first of 11 defendants in the longest completed jury trial in history in Manchester, and also represented the first defendant in a 7-month VAT fraud trial at Southwark. In the summer of 2024 he successfully defended a Ian Scott, who was charged with murder and attempted murder, and also represented Shay Walker who was acquitted of murder and manslaughter, having admitted shooting a drug dealer at point-blank range (report here.) Most recently he secured a “time served” sentence for Shaun Kent at the Old Bailey; Mr Kent admitted to conspiring to possess guns and ammunition which were offered up to the NCA in the hope of securing a reduced sentence in a drugs case involving Thomas Kavanagh: report here.
In June 2023 Nigel prosecuted Connor Chapman for the murder of Elle Edwards on Christmas Eve 2022 (report here). His other current workload involves advising a number of clients, pre and post-charge in cases involving Encrochat evidence, and he has successfully resisted a number of applications for production orders made by the police investigating alleged fraud at Liverpool City Council. In January 2025 he is representing the first defendant in a pensions liberation fraud in Leeds.
Historically, in 2022 he represented two young defendants separately in murder trials and in 2021 he appeared for the first defendant, Kyle Sanders, in an eight-handed murder trial where the deceased was shot dead. Despite Mr Sanders being first named on the indictment and alleged to be the organiser of a robbery which led to the fatal shooting, Mr Sanders was acquitted of murder and convicted of manslaughter (report here). He prosecuted Christopher Guest More for the drug-related torture and murder of Brian Waters in 2003 (convicted after a retrial, report here) and represented a 17 year-old-defendant tried for s18 assault, murder and robbery in a cut-throat defence; he was acquitted of murder but convicted of s20 assault and manslaughter. Report here.
In 2020 he appeared in a number of murder trials and successfully resisted a prosecution appeal against a successful submission of no case in a murder trial in Preston (report here). In 2019 he secured the acquittal of Lee Blowes, who was alleged to have conspired to kill Blake Brown in a gangland execution (report here) and represented Lorraine Khan, who was acquitted of gross negligence manslaughter. A criminal and family specialist, in 2018 he appeared in two high-profile murder trials in Liverpool and successfully prosecuted Darren McKie, an inspector in the Greater Manchester Police, for the murder of his wife, also a police officer (see here).
In family work, he appeared for the Maternal Grandmother who was exonerated entirely in the two-week “finding of fact” hearing in Medway CC v K and more recently he appeared for an Albanian mother in a finding of fact hearing involving allegations of modern slavery and forced prostitution.
He has been involved in many high-profile criminal cases, including having the case against his client dismissed in the “Millennium Dome Fraud” and representing the only defendant to be acquitted of conspiracy to defraud and fraudulent trading in the “Lord of Fraud” Boiler Room Fraud. He appeared in the trials of the racist killing of Anthony Walker in Huyton, the “Gangland” shooting of Michael Wright at the East Lancashire Road Retail Park and the murder of mother-of-three Lucy Hargreaves.
Nigel has appeared in terrorism cases and successfully appeared in the Court Martial for an Irish Guardsman charged with the manslaughter of an Iraqi Looter in Basra.
Nigel is well regarded for his work in confiscation cases where his IT skills can help to analyse and present the most complex financial evidence to his client’s advantage. He represented John Conroy in the confiscation proceedings of Operation Inertia, a large scale MTIC fraud involving contra-trading. The prosecution claimed that the benefit was £90m and that there were substantial hidden assets, but the eventual order was for benefit and assets of just £200,000. See the article about that case here. In late 2017 in the High Court in Belfast he successfully applied to vary a restraint order which allowed a business with a £50m per annum turnover to trade.