Joey Barton to face new domestic abuse trial

After the case was adjourned, a judge ordered that proceedings be paused over concerns a trial would be unfair to Barton as prosecutors said they did not plan to ask Mrs Barton to give evidence in court.

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Stephen Parkinson, appealed against the decision at the High Court in London, with barristers claiming at a hearing last month that a fair trial could go ahead.

On Friday two senior judges ruled in the DPP’s favour.

In a 20-page ruling, Dame Victoria Sharp said the previous judge’s decision “was wrong in principle”.

Barton, who was Bristol Rovers’ manager at the time of the alleged incident, was accused of grabbing his wife by the throat and kicking her in the head during a row outside their home, where they had been with two other couples.

He denied a charge of assault by beating after he was arrested by police at his home.

Mrs Barton was said to have been left with a golf ball-sized bruise on her forehead and a bleeding nose.

But Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court heard in March 2022 that Mrs Barton wrote to prosecutors a month before the scheduled trial to claim she was injured accidentally when friends intervened in an argument between the pair, having both drunk “four or five bottles of wine”.