A former Crown Prosecution Service lawyer who was sentenced to 14 months’ imprisonment after admitting child cruelty and assault has been struck off.
Anthony Nowogrodzki, admitted to the roll in July 1991, was convicted at Bristol Crown Court in 2024 of cruelty to a person under 16 and assault by beating. The former CPS prosecutor had initially denied the allegations to police, but admitted the offences on the day the victim attended court.
Nowogrodzki was sentenced to 14 months’ imprisonment for the child cruelty offence and three months’ imprisonment for the assault offence, to run concurrently. As Nowogrodzki had been remanded in custody, he was released following his sentence.
Nowogrodzki, who self-reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, did not appear at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and was not represented. The three-person panel heard he had sent a ‘short amount’ of correspondence arguing against the SRA’s costs and requesting to be taken off the roll and for the matter not to be pursued further.
The tribunal, after retiring to consider if the hearing ought to proceed in Nowogrodzki’s absence, decided it should as it ‘seems to us the respondent is aware of proceedings’.
Chair Richard Nicholas added: ‘On the evidence, he has voluntarily absented himself.’
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Nowogrodzki was alleged to have ill-treated a child under the age of 16 and assaulted a child by beating and in doing so breached Principles 2 and 5.
Joshua Hitchens, for the SRA, said Nowogrodzki’s change of plea was described by the trial judge as ‘coming as a surprise to both the court and the Crown’. He told the tribunal the judge ‘appears to have taken the view the offending was entirely out of character’.
Hitchens added: ‘The respondent self-reported to the SRA, that prompted an investigation by the SRA. His position…is that he does not currently have a practising certificate and wished to be removed from the roll of solicitors without having to go through this process…the respondent says “no need to drag it out”.’
He added that Nowogrodzki’s misconduct was ‘serious’ and would undermine confidence in the profession particularly when an individual ‘prosecuting others commits a very serious offence himself that in my submission plainly undermines trust and confidence of the public in the profession’.
The tribunal found the allegations proved and that both principles had been breached. Sanctioning Nowogrodzki, the chair said the panel ‘considers the misconduct in this case at the highest level, justifying only strike off in terms of sanctions’.
No costs order was made. The chair said the SRA’s costs of £8,631 were reasonable but there was ‘no realistic prospect of this being paid’.
