Race charges dropped against blind sister of right-to-die campaigner

Andrea Giddens – who is blind, suffers from severe epilepsy and is recovering from breast cancer – was due to stand trial at Wakefield Magistrates’ Court on the day she wanted to be at the side of her paralysed brother, of Bramley, Leeds, at the Court of Appeal in London.

Ms Giddens, of Micklefield, near Leeds, was facing charges of racially aggravated harassment of carer Hadal Ahmed Raja in Wakefield on July 29 last year. She had also been charged with using threatening, abusive and insulting, words and behaviour towards Mr Raja.

But the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case against the 47-year-old before the trial started. Ms Giddens, who has been blind from birth, has had severe epilepsy since she was 13 and suffers regular fits.

Speaking about facing a trial on the day her brother was at the appeal court, Ms Giddens said: “I wanted to support him. I’m gutted, I could have gone and been there.”

Julie Foy, district crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said Ms Giddens had applied to magistrates in Wakefield on May 8 to have the trial date re-arranged to allow her to support her brother but the request had been turned down by the district judge.

The CPS had an obligation to keep cases under constant review and medical evidence relating to Ms Giddens’s condition was received by the CPS last Thursday and assigned to a lawyer for review on Monday.

She said: “In light of the material contained in the report, we took the decision to discontinue the case, as there was no longer enough evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction.”