Last week Strand Chambers’ Henry Hendron was sentenced to 140 hours of unpaid work and an 18-month supervision order
A junior barrister who was spared jail last week after he admitted supplying drugs that killed his 18-year-old boyfriend has accepted his legal career is all but over.
In an interview published in The Times (£) over the weekend, Henry Hendron — who is a tenant at London’s Strand Chambers — spoke candidly about how his life, as he knew it, is now over.
The criminal barrister — who charges £250 per consultation according to his personal website — plead guilty to two counts relating to possession of a controlled drug with intent to supply. Last week Hendron was handed a 140 hours of unpaid work and 18-month supervision order. Appearing to accept he can no longer practice as barrister, he told the newspaper that his career is over.
My life as I knew it was over. My partner. My career. Happiness. All gone. I didn’t care about shame or humiliation. The worst that could happen had happened.
According to The Times, Hendron — who has represented a number of high-profile clients in the past including former BBC Apprentice winner Stella English and the Earl of Cardigan — is also in the process of being “evicted” from his apartment in the heart of legal London. Situated a stone’s throw from the historic cobbled streets of Temple, Hendron was given the keys to the flat as part of a scholarship with his inn, Middle Temple.
Hendron — who according to the newspaper was spending between “spending £600 to £1,000 a weekend on drugs” — explains how he went off the rails in the weeks after Jimenez’s death. Embarking on a two-month sex and drugs binge around London, Hendron recalls the time he considered jumping off Waterloo Bridge, saying, “I just wanted to be dead”.
Describing the death of his boyfriend Miguel Jimenez as a “living hell” the criminal barrister explained how Jimenez’s mother Martha wrote to the judge asking for him not to be punished. Reflecting on the events over the past year and half, Hendron — whose mother wasn’t aware he was gay until the story first broke — said “he [Jimenez] was 18; I was 34. I was the barrister. I should have known better.”