Joey Barton, 42, has arrived at court accused of attacking his wife Georgia Barton after a heavy drinking session.
The former football player is alleged to have drunk up to five bottles of wine before launching an assault on Mrs Barton, leaving her with a ‘golf-sized’ lump on her head and a bloody nose.
He was pictured outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court this morning for a new hearing after a previous trial was halted in 2022 when Mrs Barton retracted her claims.
A judge ordered that proceedings be paused over concerns a trial would be unfair to Barton after prosecutors said they did not plan to ask Mrs Barton to give evidence in court.
But last year, two senior judges ruled the decision to halt the trial was wrong after the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Stephen Parkinson, appealed against the decision at the High Court in London.
In a 20-page ruling, Dame Victoria Sharp said the previous judge’s decision ‘was wrong in principle’.
Barton was accused of grabbing his wife by the throat and kicking her in the head during a row outside their home in Kew, south-west London, where they had been with two other couples in June 2021.
Joey Barton has arrived at court accused of attacking his wife Georgia Barton after a heavy drinking session
Joey Barton and his wife Georgia pictured outside Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court in 2022
Barton previously denied the charge of assault by beating against him
Barton had denied a charge of assault by beating after being arrested by police at his home.
Mrs Barton wrote to prosecutors a month before the original planned trial and said the injury was an accident and came after she and her husband had both drank ‘four to five’ bottles of wine.
She claimed in her letter that her injuries occurred after friends tried to intervene in an argument between the pair.
The incident, on June 2, 2021, was brought to the attention of police when Mrs Barton made a 999 call to officers just before 11.15pm.
The couple married in 2019 in Oxfordshire and have two children together.
This is a breaking news story and is being updated.
