A NEW Honorary Recorder of Bradford has been named following the retirement of Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC earlier this month. 

His Honour Judge Richard Mansell QC has been appointed as Resident Judge at Bradford Combined Court Centre.

Judge Mansell, who graduated from Leeds University, was called to the Bar in 1991. He was made a Queen’s Counsel in 2009 and became a full-time judge in 2013, leaving his Bradford base to sit as a Circuit Judge on the Northern Circuit, based at Manchester Crown Square Court.

At the time, he told the Telegraph & Argus: “My long-term aspirations were to try the heavyweight criminal cases and now I am going to have the chance to do that on a regular basis. It is a court centre that deals with serious crime and I consider it perfect timing to start that part of my career.”

Prior to his move across the Pennines, he worked regularly at Bradford Crown Court and also sat there as a Recorder, a part-time judge. 

He has been involved in a number of high-profile cases over the years. 

In 2010, while sitting as a Recorder at Bradford Crown Court, he jailed three care workers who filmed the “inhuman and degrading” abuse of two old people at a Bradford nursing home.

He told Jolene Hullah, Tanzeela Safdar, and Paul Poole they had committed “despicable acts of abuse” for their own amusement and gratification.

“Everyone who is in court cannot fail to be appalled by your sick conduct,” he said.

He later prosecuted the case of Duane Bellamy, who was jailed indefinitely in 2012 for the street killing in Keighley of Jason Seed. In the same year, he jailed psychopathic torturer Mark Whitteron, of Holme Wood, for 11 years for inflicting six years of “living hell” on a vulnerable man.

He told Whitteron: “You simply preyed on a more vulnerable individual in a psychopathic way.

"You exploited him systematically and cruelly, terrorising him.”

Last October at Manchester Crown Court, he jailed Aaron Marsden Booth, an abusive ex-boyfriend who stabbed his former partner in front of police officers, for 14 years.

Back in May of this year, he presided over one of the first court hearings of 30-year-old Eltiona Skana, who is charged with the murder of seven-year-old Emily Jones in Queen’s Park, Bolton, on Mother’s Day.

Judge Mansell will take up his new role next month. 

The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary announced yesterday morning: “The Senior Presiding Judge is happy to announce that, following an Expressions of Interest exercise, HHJ Richard Mansell QC has been appointed as Resident Judge at Bradford Combined Court Centre with effect from  August 17.

"The Senior Presiding Judge wishes HHJ Richard Mansell QC all the best in his new role.”