Holly Rust

Practice areas

General crime
Regulatory crime

Profile

Holly joined Devon Chambers in October 2018 and has since developed a busy criminal practice, both defending and prosecuting a wide range of offences in the youth court, magistrates’ court and predominantly the Crown Court.

A formidable advocate in court, Holly has a thorough approach to her case preparation and always puts her clients first. Holly has a background of working with vulnerable individuals with mental health difficulties and other disabilities, meaning she is well-placed to support such individuals throughout the difficulties of criminal proceedings.

Holly is a member of the Junior Junior Scheme for the Government Legal Department.

As well as acting as the Devon and Cornwall representative for the Western Circuit, Holly volunteers as a mentor for the Bridging the Bar initiative. She also has her own personal project of the Legal Pets Charity Calendar for Billable Hour, raising money for Save the Children: https://twitter.com/LawPawCalendar.

Holly is regulated by the Bar Standards Board.

Recent Cases

R v D (2020). Defending a case in which the issue was that the officers were acting unlawfully as they were motivated by racism.
R v B (2020). Defending a case where both the defendant and the complainants had mental health difficulties. This involved working closely with the defendant in conference and adapting questioning accordingly.
R v A (2020). Prosecuting a case which required careful wording of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order to prevent the defendant from wearing inappropriate clothing in public places.
R v S (2021). Defending a case where the defendant was unable to leave prison because of their mental health.
R v A (2021). Prosecuting a case involving abuse of process arguments.
R v B (2021). Defending a case where documents from family proceedings revealed that the complainant’s account differed in those proceedings. This included handling the application in the family court to enable those documents to be used in the defence of the criminal case.
R v M (2022). Defended a case of breaching a restraining order, with a defence of insanity.
R v H (2023). Appealed a sentence at the Court of Appeal, where the case involved breaching a SHPO by setting up social media accounts. Argued that the duration should not be aggravated when account have been set up for a long time, but gone unused.