Jacobs: Tactical decision not to call witnesses
An employed barrister jailed for raping a woman he met on Tinder has been banned from working for law firms after he failed in his appeal.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has made Robin Edward Jacobs subject to an order under section 43 of the Solicitors Act 1974, which means he cannot work for a law firm it regulates in future without its permission.
The lawyer, from Woodford, east London, was called to the Bar in July 2006 and specialised in education law at Cardiff and London firm Sinclairslaw.
He was convicted two years ago and repeatedly yelled “I didn’t do it. I was telling the truth” from the dock after the verdict was given.
Mr Jacobs was having consensual sex with the woman in September 2017 at his flat but suddenly forced her to have anal sex, ignoring her screams to stop for up to 30 seconds.
The Old Bailey heard that Mr Jacobs then told the woman, in her 30s, to “come for a cuddle” and offered her paracetamol.
He denied rape and said he would have stopped immediately if she had told him to. But he was convicted after a week-long retrial and jailed for four years. He thanked the judge for imposing the “lowest possible sentence”.
Mr Jacobs appealed on the basis that, in the light of fresh psychiatric evidence not available at trial, the conviction was unsafe because the jury was not directed to take his autism into account when considering whether his belief that the woman consented was, or may have been, reasonable.
The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal at the end of 2023, with the Lady Chief Justice, Baroness Carr, saying the impact of his autism was “at best… a very tentative proposition” in the report of a consultant forensic psychiatrist, Dr Cumming, prepared before trial.
“It appears to suggest the possibility that the applicant’s autism might have made a relatively minor contribution to belief in consent. In that situation, it was all the more important for the expert to explain how that opinion related to the circumstances of the incident.
“But here that opinion was not tethered to the evidence about the circumstances of the incident, or to what had happened previously between the applicant and L or in previous relationships.”
It was also inconsistent with another part of the report and that inconsistency was not explained.
The additional psychiatric evidence prepared after trial did not alter this analysis. A second report from another consultant psychiatrist did not explain why she had changed her mind from her first, pre-trial, report and, like that of Dr Cumming, described any contribution of Mr Jacobs’ autism to his belief in consent as “a theoretical possibility”.
Baroness Carr said: “We do not see how a theoretical possibility of the kind described by the experts could assist a jury meaningfully. Rather it is likely to confuse proper decision-making.”
Mr Jacobs waived privilege and the appeal court recorded how he decided to accept the agreed facts about his autism that were put before the trial, rather than calling his experts to give evidence.
Baroness Carr said there was “no reasonable explanation for the failure to adduce the expert evidence at trial”. On the contrary, he chose to make the “tactical decision” to accept the agreed facts.
“The applicant is an intelligent person – indeed was a qualified practising lawyer – who, as his counsel at the trial has made clear, well understood the psychiatric evidence and the issues that he was facing.
“For all these reasons, it is not necessary or expedient in the interests of justice for the additional expert evidence to be admitted. This is a case which demonstrates why finality in litigation is an important consideration.”
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