A judge has criticised police and prosecutors after a people-trafficking trial collapsed through failure to disclose crucial evidence – forcing a defendant to give birth in prison.

The case at Wood Green crown court in north London – the latest in a lengthening series of prosecutions abandoned because of similar problems – was halted on Wednesday three weeks after the hearing began.

About 65,000 lines of social media and text messages downloaded from mobile phones were eventually handed over to defence lawyers after the start of the trial.

Two men and a woman had been charged in the case that involved allegedly trafficking a woman from Romania into the UK for the purposes of prostitution. Medical evidence suggesting that the alleged victim was already pregnant when she arrived in the UK was also reported to have been disclosed belatedly.

The Crown Prosecution Service and the police are re-examining thousands of current rape cases to check whether there has been full disclosure of evidence to defendants’ lawyers.

At least four rape trials were abandoned over the Christmas and new year period when it emerged that officers had failed to hand in digital evidence that would exonerate the accused. Among them was the case of 22-year-old Liam Allan, who spent almost two years on bail ahead of a rape trial that was halted at Croydon crown court in December.



In the latest case, Judge Gregory Perrins said there had been “wholesale failure” by the prosecution over its disclosures of evidence in the case of Adrian Iordan, Anisoara Lautaru and new mother Petruta-Cristina Bosoanca, who was held in custody for more than 13 months.

All three would have faced lengthy custodial sentences had they been convicted. Speaking at Wood Green crown court, the judge said: “There have been serious errors in the way in which the prosecution dealt with disclosure throughout 2017. There have been failures by both the police and the CPS.

“[They] should have appreciated a long time ago that this was material which potentially undermined their case and disclosed it accordingly. Had it been made available sooner I have no doubt that the case would have been fully reviewed at a much earlier stage. The laws of disclosure exist to ensure that a trial is fair. If there is material which either undermines the prosecution case or assists the defendant it must be made available to the defence.

Bosoanca, 25, gave birth while in custody awaiting trial. She told BBC news: “In the moments when I was supposed to be happy, I was happy but unhappy at the same time.”

A CPS spokesman said: “We accept that there were issues with the disclosure handling in this case. We have today given an undertaking that we will work to establish what has happened in this case, to identify what went wrong and where lessons might be learned.”