SOME of the most high-profile cases in the past 12 months have had Justice Dame Bobbie Cheema-Grubb as the presiding judge - the first Asian woman to serve as a High Court judge.
In February 2023, she sentenced a former policeman David Carrick to life imprisonment for a "monstrous" string of 71 sexual offences against 12 women.
She said Carrick had "brazenly raped and sexually assaulted" his victims, believing himself to be "untouchable" due to his position which afforded him "exceptional powers to coerce and control".
Only a sentence of life imprisonment could reflect "the gravity" of his crimes, she added.
Another high-profile case saw Justice Cheema-Grubb announce an eight-month suspended prison sentence to Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a US diplomat, for killing a teenager Harry Dunn in a road accident in August 2019.
In December 2022, Justice Cheema Grubb sentenced fairground worker Jordan McSweeney to a minimum of 38 years jail for sexually assaulting and killing a trainee solicitor, Zara Aleena on her way back home in June that year.
Other high profile cases included the successful prosecutions of retired Church of England Bishop Peter Ball for sexual abuse, and of barrister and recorder Constance Briscoe for perverting the course of justice.
Justice Cheema Grubb also adjudicated on landmark cases such as the former Labour MP Fiona Onasanya and domestic violence victim Sally Challen.
Cheema-Grubb was called to the bar in 1989.
In 2006 she became the first Asian woman to be appointed a junior treasury counsel.
Based at the Central Criminal Court, the treasury counsels are instructed to prosecute the most serious and high-profile cases.
She subsequently became the third woman ever to become a senior treasury counsel in 2011 and was authorised to sit as a deputy high court judge.
She was appointed a recorder in 2007 and took Silk in 2013. The same year she was appointed Queen's Counsel (QC). She served as a Senior Treasury Counsel and was authorised to sit as a deputy High Court judge.
She chaired an Advocacy Training Council working group that produced the report "Raising the Bar: The Handling of Vulnerable Witnesses, Victims and Defendants in Court"
In 2016, She was made a Dame after her appointment to the high court.
Cheema was born to Indian Sikh Punjabi parents who came to the UK from India in the 1960s. She grew up in Leeds, and attended City of Leeds School before studying law at King's College London and chose a career as a criminal law barrister
Growing up in Yorkshire where her father did manual work and mother was a seamstress, she would accompany her parents, who couldn’t speak English well, to meetings with the council or employers to translate. She would later write about the stereotyping she felt at those meetings, which would dawn in a sense of justice, and injustice, in the young Bobbie.
Her volunteering at a law centre in Leeds during her teens would show her a practical, flexible and creative way of finding solutions.
She worked at 2 Hare Court, specialising in prosecuting and defending cases related to business crime, homicide, and terrorism.
A judge of the King’s Bench Division, she believes in speaking powerful words through the judgments, and counts it as a responsibility.
She was the presiding judge in the Finsbury Park terrorist attack case, and while delivering the judgment, she remarked: “We must respond to evil with good,” highlighting the intervention of the imam who prevented the crowd from attacking the perpetrator, to let justice take its course. “His response should be everyone’s response,” she implored all citizens.
In January 2019, she became a presiding judge responsible for the deployment, discipline and well-being of all criminal judges and magistrates on the south-eastern circuit and finished her term on December 31, 2022.
During the Covid pandemic, she was appointed as one of the temporary judicial commissioners, who ensure that the necessary authorisation and oversight of the use of investigatory powers by intelligence agencies, police and other public bodies is maintained.
She also takes a special interest in promoting women who work in the criminal justice sector. She was instrumental in designing the mentoring scheme run by Women in Criminal Law. Dame Bobbie lives in London with her husband, Russell, an artist. They have three children.
