Robert Rhodes avoids whole life term following rare retrial for murder
19 January 2026
Garden Court North’s Nina Grahame KC represented Mr Rhodes during the nine-week trial at Inner London Crown Court. Credit: Sinai Images / Shutterstock.
On 12 December 2025, Mr Robert Rhodes was found guilty of murder, child cruelty, perverting the course of justice and two counts of perjury in an rare retrial at the Inner London Crown Court, eight years after being acquitted of the same murder.
Last Friday (16 January 2026), Mr Rhodes’ minimum term for the murder was fixed at 29 years and six months less 590 remand days, with concurrent determinate terms on the four associated counts.
52-year-old Mr Rhodes killed his estranged wife, Dawn Rhodes, at their family home in June 2016. He was found not guilty following a trial at the Central Criminal Court in 2017 when jurors accepted that Rhodes had acted in reasonable self-defence during a violent argument with his wife.
The couple’s child, aged nine in 2016, had witnessed some of the incident, suffered a serious wound, and initially provided an account generally supportive of Mr Rhodes’ defence. In 2021, the child told a friend, then a counsellor and then the police that the earlier account had been untrue; Mr Rhodes had, in fact, planned the killing, using control and coercion to persuade the child to actively assist in the murder and to maintain the subsequent cover up for some five years. The wounds to Mr Rhodes and the child during the incident had, the child now asserted, been deliberately caused by Mr Rhodes and not by Dawn Rhodes.
This new evidence founded a prosecution application to the Court of Appeal in 2024 for retrial of the murder as an exception to the ‘double jeopardy’ rule, which prohibits a retrial following acquittal in most cases.
Lord Justice William Davis allowed the application and quashed the acquittal, finding that the child provided new and compelling evidence in what he described as a “unique case”. The Court ordered a retrial of the murder with additional counts reflecting Mr Rhodes’ other criminal actions during and after the fatal event.
At the retrial, Mr Rhodes was unanimously convicted on all five indicted counts. He received a mandatory life sentence of imprisonment for the murder with concurrent determinate sentences on the remaining counts.
The prosecution had invited the judge to consider declining to fix a minimum term for the murder – in other words, to consider imposing a whole life term in this most serious case.
While conceding that the aggravating circumstances of the associated very serious offences were capable, in combination, of justifying a minimum term starting point of 30 years, the defence submitted that there could then be no further ‘double counting’ of these circumstances. The defence argued that this was a case of particular, but not exceptional seriousness and that a whole life term was not justified.
Double jeopardy
A defendant cannot usually be tried twice for the same crime. This provides protection from retrial and harassment.
Following reforms in the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the ‘double jeopardy rule’ was amended to permit the Court of Appeal, on application, to order a retrial following acquittal of certain very serious offences where “new and compelling evidence” becomes available and the interests of justice test is met.
In the case of Mr Rhodes, the Court of Appeal considered the new evidence from the child to be sufficiently compelling to order a retrial in this case.
The relevant statutory provisions are set out in sections 75 to 79 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Section 75 identifies the class of case in which an acquittal may be quashed and a retrial ordered; the offence of murder is one of the offences to which the provision applies. Section 76 requires the DPP to give consent to an application to quash an acquittal. Sections 78 and 79 lay out the relevant tests, for new and compelling evidence Section 78) and interests of justice test (Section 79).
Garden Court North’s Nina Grahame KC represented Mr Rhodes at the Court of Appeal application in 2024 and at the retrial in 2025. Nina was instructed by Peter Walsh and Philip Hill of SGK Solicitors, leading Ruth Jones of 9 Bedford Row Chambers.
Additional media
BBC News – Wife killer who manipulated child jailed for life
Sky News – Man found guilty of murdering wife in rare retrial
ITV News – Surrey man guilty of killing wife in retrial after child reveals murder plot eight years on
For further information, please contact Alex Blair, Communications Manager at Garden Court North Chambers: ablair@gcnchambers.co.uk
