Amanda O’Mara

Year of Call: 1999

CPS Grade: 3
 

 

Direct Access

Approved by the Bar Council under the Direct Access scheme, and in suitable cases welcomes instructions directly from members of the public. Please see the Direct Access section of this website for further details.

Areas Of Specialism

Financial crime, Health and social care, Sexual Offences

Career overview

Previously a tenant at 43 Temple Row Chambers in Birmingham, joined Citadel Chambers in 2015.

Practice Summary

Specialist criminal advocate with a varied defence and appellate practice, undertakes a broad spectrum of work from cases involving homicide and attempted murder, non-fatal violence, rape and other serious sexual offences, drugs, firearms, fraud and other offences of dishonesty, driving offences and regulatory crime.

Has particular experience with allegations of serious sexual offences.

 

Details of practice

Regularly instructed in cases involving defendants or witnesses who are vulnerable by reason of age, mental illness or learning disability, and frequently represents health care professionals accused of theft from or ill treatment, neglect or sexual offences against their patients.

Has extensive experience defending cases involving allegations of serious sexual offences including allegations of rape (current and historic), grooming offences, familial offences and breach of trust offences.

Her practice also extends to multi-defendant complex fraud and drug cases involving detailed analysis of mobile telephone billing records and cell site data, computer evidence and covert surveillance. Has also been instructed as lead counsel in multi-defendant, multi-million pound fraud and money laundering trials throughout the country.


Sexual offences:
  • Represented a defendant with extensive learning difficulties charged with (historic) rape, outcome was hospital order rather than imprisonment.
  • Represented a male with learning difficulties accused of sexual assault on his girlfriend’s daughters.
  • Represented a care home worker charged with sexual assault on a mentally ill patient.
  • Represented a defendant charged with sexual assault on a neighbour’s children.
  • Represented a youth charged with rape of a child.
  • Represented a man charged with rape and false imprisonment of his wife.
Financial crime:
  • Represented one of a number of defendants involved in an international revenue share fraud where major mobile telecommunications providers had been defrauded out of over £3 million.
  • Represented one of several defendants charged with fraud on elderly people, and money laundering.
Health and social care:
  • Represented a grandmother accused of child cruelty against her grand-daughter who suffered with a mental illness.
  • Represented a pre-operative transsexual who set fire to her police cell as a protest at search by a male police officer; as a result of the offence the local police force reviewed their policy on searching persons with gender issues.
  • Argued that guilty pleas entered by a defendant should be vacated, and sought medical evidence relating to the defendant’s mental health.
Other notable cases:
  • Represented a drug user and prostitute charged with armed robbery.
  • Represented a teenager accused of being a ‘honeytrap’ in a conspiracy to assault.
  • In the trial of a care-worker for theft from a patient with severe learning difficulties, successfully argued for exclusion of comments made to police during a strip-search.
  • A defendant charged with kidnapping.
  • Represented a defendant charged with causing death by dangerous driving.
  • Represented one of several defendants charged with neglect of patients.
  • Various appearances in the Court of Appeal, in appeals against sentence (drugs conspiracy, death by careless driving, aggravated burglary) and responding to the Crown’s appeal against terminating ruling.

 

Podcasts

Photos

videos

Further Information

Downloads

Witness Familiarisation Support And Courses

These are a few examples of courses in which our members have been involved:

  • Witness familiarisation with trainee police officers and special constables from Northamptonshire Police, where the officers were questioned regarding their statements about ‘mock’ arrest exercises
  • Similar exercises with detectives from the West Midlands Police
  • Witness familiarisation with officers of the Northamptonshire Probation Service.  These officers were given training on the process of giving evidence in sentencing hearings in the Magistrates Court and Crown Court
  • Expert witness familiarisation and training, with expert witnesses such as independent Forensic Scientists, and officers of the Health and Safety Executive. The exercises involved questioning regarding expert reports prepared by the participants

Equal Opportunity Policy

 

Citadel’s members come from a range of backgrounds and everyone is treated with the same respect as part of our Chamber’s community. 

 

We operate an equal opportunity policy and act in accordance with the Bar Code of Conduct and the Equality Code for the Bar.

 

We seek to prevent direct or indirect discrimination towards our clients, staff, tenants and pupils, on the grounds of race, colour, ethnic or national origin, nationality or citizenship, political persuasion, religion, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, disability or age.

Maternity / Paternity Policy

We support all members  who  are fortunate enough to become parents.   Whilst Citadel has written policies dealing with issues of maternity and paternity leave for members of Chambers and support staff, we also try to be flexible in our approach and to accommodate individual needs.

Uniquely (to our knowledge) we offer direct financial support to members returning from parental leave in order to cushion the cash flow impact of return to practice . 

Click here to listen to a podcast about our members with children and how we deal with childcare issues.