In Your Defence

by Sarah Langford

  I sat beside him, perched on the edge of the seat so as not to sink into its soft middle, conscious that I appeared impatient. In truth, I needed him to be quick, to keep up. My other client was in a conference room opposite and was annoyed I had another case, seeing it as a mark of disrespect.

  I went quickly through the offence. To make out that the crime was burglary, I explained, the prosecution needed to prove that Raymond had both trespassed and stolen goods. I summarized the evidence quickly, flicking through the statements and interview. Then I pulled out the defence case statement I had drafted. Was this really his defence, I asked him? That the two siblings had gone to Mandy’s address because she had sent them a text message asking them to come, and she had simply offered up the DVD player in lieu of money she owed them? Raymond nodded.

  ‘So, why did she owe you money?’ I asked.

  ‘My mum had lent it to her,’ Raymond replied, ‘and I was collecting it.’

  ‘Great. Will your mother come to court to say that, then?’

  Raymond puffed out his cheeks. ‘No way. She doesn’t like the law. I’m not likely to get her to come here.’

  I hesitated, wondering whether to push the point but deciding it would be a waste of time. I flicked through the interview, finding the part I needed. ‘Your fingerprints were found in the flat,’ I said. ‘And you say that’s because your mum cleaned for Mandy sometimes and you went to help?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Raymond replied.

  ‘So why did you lie in your first interview and say you had never been to her flat before?’ I glanced up at the court clock hanging on the corridor wall.

  ‘I was scared,’ he said, staring at his hands. ‘I was at home and I didn’t want the law to arrest me. I just wanted him to go. To leave me alone. It was stupid.’

  ‘Scared? Why would you be scared? Because you thought you’d done something wrong?’ I asked and he shrugged. I drew a breath.

  ‘Do you still have your telephone – to prove that Mandy texted you, asked you to come over?’ Raymond, still looking down, muttered that he’d lost it. I did not believe him. He was wasting my time, I thought, feeling the fury of my other client boring through the closed door opposite. Barristers burst through the courtroom’s double doors as the tannoy boomed out Raymond’s and Daniella’s names. Too late, I thought, too late. We’re on.

  ‘Here, sign this.’ I thrust the defence statement at him. Raymond took the pen I handed him and wrote his signature at the bottom of the page in a childish, looping script. I stood up and beckoned him to follow, rattling through my advice as we walked towards the doors. Credit for a guilty plea: a third off any sentence. The closer to trial, the less credit you get.3 A disabled victim would be an aggravating factor. Not a good picture in court. Called the police straight afterwards. Plenty of evidence. Criminal record. And so on, and so on. Raymond listened blankly, then, as we paused outside the court, he looked at me.

  ‘I didn’t take it. I didn’t. She gave it to me. Honestly.’

  Part of me was relieved. I hated the scramble of pressure, the lingering doubt over whether I had properly advised, properly listened. ‘Fine,’ I said. I pushed open the swinging doors and lowered my voice. ‘You must only plead guilty to something you have done. If you say you haven’t done it then we must have a trial. When they ask you for your plea you say “Not guilty.” All right?’

  As we walked into court I felt someone come in behind us. It was Daniella with her barrister. The siblings acknowledged one another briefly as they waited for the dock officer. He ambled towards them, overweight and cheerful, unlocked the dock and motioned for them to take their seats as though he were showing them their way in a theatre. I turned towards Daniella’s barrister, standing to my left.

  ‘Sorry, I couldn’t find you!’ she said. ‘Here – I’ve done a form.’ With thanks, I took the long form we had to complete and hand in if our client intended to plead not guilty. ‘Look,’ she went on, ‘I’m just covering the case for the trial barrister. She’s going not guilty – for now, anyway. I haven’t done a defence statement. I’ll ask for time to file one, but let’s just say I suspect she may soon have a change of heart …’

  I nodded and hustled towards the front of the court, waiting for the barristers in the case before us to leave. The prosecutor had a stack of files on the bench in front of him and I watched him shuffle one set of papers to the bottom and reach for the next on the pile. Sensing I was watching him, he glanced over in my direction inquisitorially. ‘Not guilty,’ I mouthed and shook my head to reinforce the statement. He gave a nod of acknowledgment. I handed him a copy of my defence case statement and he scanned it, blankly. His involvement in the case was unlikely to go beyond today and he therefore needed to know only the minimum of detail. Squeezing behind him, I took my place on his right and began in haste to fill out my parts on the form my co-defendant counsel had handed me. Two sharp raps then sounded as the usher cried ‘All rise!’ and we scrambled to our feet as the judge strode in.

  A month after the hearing an email appeared from Daniella’s trial barrister. Not recognizing his name, I looked him up. He was older than me, dark-haired and smiling. He looked good fun: the sort of person it would be entertaining to do a trial alongside. The sort of person whose clients liked the easy assurance of the fact that he looked like, sounded like, acted like a legacy of criminal barristers they knew from page and screen. The email was friendly, polite, but I knew what he meant by it. He thought their account was ridiculous, laughable even, and he had arranged for his solicitor to meet his client, and her mother, and take some sensible instructions. It was a warning, I knew that much. Daniella was going to be told she should plead guilty. If she did, Raymond would be left to have a trial alone, and what hope did he have of convincing the jury that he had not committed the crime if his own sister had admitted they did it? I did not want to gain a reputation as someone who does not advise their client properly or tell them when the evidence against them is strong and they are likely to be convicted. The trial definitely wouldn’t go ahead now, I thought, relieved I had been liberated from the humiliating prospect of calling a disabled woman a liar. I tapped my confident reply: all we needed was one of our clients to plead guilty first, and the other would surely follow.

  A month after I sent my email, Daniella stood in court and changed her plea to guilty at a hearing listed for the purpose. She did so alone, for Raymond, my solicitors told me, had not changed his mind. And that was how, six weeks later, Raymond’s name appeared alone on the screen outside court. He was going to have his trial, with or without Daniella by his side.

  That morning I found Raymond waiting outside the courtroom. Several other hearings had been listed in front of our trial and so we had some time. I took him down to a quieter space at the end of the corridor, where we sat alongside one another and again went through the evidence. As he answered my questions, Raymond began to fill in his story with colour. He knew Mandy, he said. He and Daniella would go over to her flat, sometimes with his mum, sometimes not. Mandy had Raymond’s phone number – she had texted Raymond asking him to come to the flat and take something in lieu of a debt she owed his mother. She had left the door open for them, invited them in, chatted to them. She showed them where the DVD player was kept and made sure they took the right cable to go with it. She even offered them a bag to carry it home. I frowned as I looked at the notes I had prepared for the trial. A DVD player was the oddest thing to have taken: cumbersome, heavy, not easy to get rid of, worth – should they sell it on – about £20. As well as this, they had found it in a cardboard box in Mandy White’s wardrobe, in her bedroom right at the back of her flat. I looked at Raymond, trying to weigh him up. I could not shake the feeling that there was another story lying behind the one I was being told. This other story might just save him, if only I could work it out.

  ‘Raymond,’ I asked, ‘if what you say is true, why did Daniella plead guilty?’

  Raymond stared down at the blue
carpet in the corridor. ‘Her barrister told her she had to. Told her that the evidence was really strong. He said her record was so long that if she was convicted she’d definitely go down. Said this was the only way she’d stay out of prison, if she pleaded guilty, because she’s still a youth and everything.’

  I flushed. These were the words Daniella had repeated to Raymond and I doubted they were what the friendly dark-haired barrister had actually said, but the sense of it must have been there. And it was true. Daniella’s record was far worse than Raymond’s. Mostly petty theft, it was scattered with enough incidents of drug possession, light violence and public disorder to mean that a prison sentence was soon inevitable. Despite being four years older, Raymond had only one previous conviction: a shoplifting offence on 24 December a few years ago. Had I looked at the date properly before I asked him the details, I could have guessed his explanation and spared him the embarrassment of admitting that his mother had no money for a Christmas tree and so, for her, he had stolen one.

  ‘Sarah Langford?’

  The voice startled me. It was deep and assured, and I immediately recognized it as belonging to Stanley Sharp, the prosecutor. He stood over me as the court traffic of barristers and defendants and police flashed past behind him. He was one of a collection of well-known figures on circuit, part of a cohort of men who swelled the corridors and robing rooms with jokes and teasing and swagger. I knew him, of course, although he did not recognize me.

  ‘Yes, hi, hello.’ I rose and stood, matching him in height. I suspected from the unmarked papers under his arm, still neatly tied up in pink ribbon, that he had done little by way of preparation for the trial; that he had thought there was no need, such was the weight of evidence against my client. ‘Can we have a word?’ He motioned with his head in the direction of the robing room further down the corridor.

  We did not go in. I stood alongside the keypad to the door as Stanley leaned back against the wall. His demeanour was of someone used to getting his own way, who knew his superior age and status was an advantage in a situation like this and was working out how hard he should press it. He did not want to waste three days on a petty burglary trial when he could be off doing weightier and better-paid matters. And we both knew it.

  ‘Are we really going to have a trial on this?’ Stanley asked conspiratorially. ‘I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, your client’s defence is a pile of shit. The sister’s pleaded – you did know that, right?’

  I nodded, conscious that there was little point in going through the weaknesses of the prosecution’s case in response. At best I would just sound plaintive; at worst I would give Stanley a chance to work out how to mend the holes. But his confidence pressed on a nagging doubt. Maybe my sense that there was something to Raymond’s story was entirely misplaced – nothing but naïve wishful thinking. Like most of those who are self-employed, I am required to learn to trust my judgement. In my first few years at the Bar I would spend journeys home from court running a case over in my mind like a film reel. Would someone else have lost? Would someone else have won? Would someone else have called that witness? Would someone else have asked that question? Experience had given me confidence and taught me assurance so that, by the time I represented Raymond, I did trust my instinct. But this did not mean that, faced with the displeasure of a senior barrister who was making it clear he thought I was being a fool, I did not doubt my decision and my abilities.

  I knew I must continue to be affable and underwhelming, to flap my hands and roll my eyes at my client’s stubbornness, for it was unhelpful to get a reputation as someone tricky, prickly or difficult. I assured Stanley I had tried everything, but that my client just would not budge. It would be a speedy trial, I said, over in a flash. I batted away the prospect of a legal argument about Daniella’s guilty plea – of course I would have to resist his application to tell the jury, but I knew that the judge would almost certainly allow it in.4 Easier, then, just to get on with things. Better not to spend hours leaning on my client to get a guilty plea only for him to change his mind when it came to his sentence and protest his innocence to anyone who would listen. And so Stanley was left muttering that he had better go and make sure the court was ready for his witness, because of the walking frame, and the special chair, and the many breaks required for numerous different medications, and I returned to Raymond and said that we were ready. We were going to have our trial.

  Stanley rose to begin questioning Mandy White. I could tell that his confidence in Raymond’s guilt had been bolstered by the sight of her. The jury, surely, had convicted Raymond as soon as they had seen her laborious entrance into the courtroom. Stanley held her witness statement aloft, one hand on his hip, leaning nonchalantly against the flipped-up chair behind him.

  ‘So, Miss White, had you met Raymond Baker before that day?’

  ‘Oh yes, lots of times.’ Mandy’s tone was warm. ‘I know his younger sister. Nice girl. Does some shopping for me. They’ve both popped in once or twice for coffee or a glass of wine.’

  The image of this woman sitting down with the two young defendants for coffee or wine in a tableau of easy recreation was ludicrous and I saw Stanley stiffen slightly, although he remained in pose. I wrote down her evidence and drew ‘XX’ in the notebook’s margin to remind me to ask her about it in cross-examination. Stanley paused, then clearly decided not to press her on it for fear of what else she might say. He moved quickly on.

  ‘And tell us, please, how the defendant …’ he moved his hand from his hip, sweeping it towards the dock at the back of court as the jury followed its arc with their gaze ‘… came to be in your flat that day?’

  I looked at Mandy’s witness statement in front of me and read again the line describing how Raymond and Daniella had forced their way through her door with howls of threatened violence.

  ‘Well,’ said Mandy, contemplatively, ‘the door was ajar, see? To let in the fresh air. And so I can get in and out. Don’t want to lock myself in, do I? I had my back to it, and I heard some noise and turned round to see them standing there, saying “Hello, Mandy, you owe us some money.”’

  Stanley cleared his throat and pushed himself upright from the seat. Well, that’s your trespass gone, I thought, glancing over at him. He did not look back. ‘But had you given them permission to come in, Miss White?’ he said, urging her to give him the right answer by his emphasis.

  ‘Well, no, but I was turned away when they came in, like. He was being a bit confrontational, was Raymond. I didn’t owe him any money, I said. Then his sister said I would be in big trouble if I didn’t pay up, and they weren’t leaving until I handed it over. And then they made the threats and stuff. Then they started ransacking my wardrobe. Raymond took my phone and called someone, saying he was going to give them my address. I don’t know who it was though.’

  Stanley leaned forward and began quickly skimming through Mandy’s witness statement. I knew he must be looking for the paragraph where she claimed that Raymond had thrown her phone across the room, meaning she was unable to call for help while they were there. I watched him find the paragraph, confirm that it said what he remembered, and weigh up whether to challenge her new evidence. He decided to leave it. ‘And, um, did they find anything in the wardrobe, Miss White?’

  ‘Well, they pulled out my clothes, and then some electrical cables, and then they grabbed the box with the DVD player in it and plonked it down on the table. Then they calmed down a bit. And after that, they left. After talking to someone on the phone. Not sure who. They just scootched off. I yelled “Where’s my phone?” at them and Raymond threw it back at me, and then I called the police.’

  There was a pause. I could feel the jury looking at Stanley, waiting for him to ask the next question, wondering at his delay. ‘And, so, Miss White, what would you estimate the value of the DVD player to be?’

  She sucked air through her teeth. ‘Oh nothing really, they’re so cheap nowadays. Twenty, twenty-five pounds or so, I reckon.’
>
  I watched Stanley carefully. His face remained expressionless, but I knew his confidence in what Mandy was going to say next must have evaporated. The witness statement he held in his hand was, clearly, no real help. He cleared his throat again, asked Mandy a few questions about how she felt about the offence, then sat down heavily, a brief wave of his hand in my direction indicating he was offering her up to me.

  As I stood to cross-examine Mandy I tried to read her face. As with all witnesses, I needed to anticipate how she would respond when I questioned her. Some prosecution witnesses can only ever see the defence barrister as the enemy. They feel they have to deny any assertion I put to them and that they must take any opportunity to repeat their case, thinking that they must not give an inch. They do not realize that this can, in fact, make them seem far from objective and reliable. Mandy had every reason to be hostile towards me – I was, after all, about to call her a liar, even if I could not say why she had lied. Not yet. But when she looked at me her flushed, worn face remained passive and open, and it occurred to me that, maybe, she was not used to being the centre of attention. It was quite possible that Mandy was also unused to the courtesy and kindness people had shown her during this experience, and that she was quite enjoying it all.

  We began with the layout of her flat. It was, she said, long and thin with the bedroom at the back and hard to find. Yes, she told the court, quite proudly, she owned a number of valuable items. A laptop, her phone, a handful of silver frames, a bit of jewellery, a camera. All smaller and more valuable, she agreed, than a DVD player. She flatly denied owing Raymond money, although, unprompted, she said she may previously have lent some to him. And, as it happened, this too was £20. There were, she said, looking at the ceiling, other unmentionable issues on which she would not be drawn because they were, she considered, not relevant. But yes, there had been other occasions when she had willingly asked the two defendants in. I pressed her to explain. Mandy glanced coyly at the jury. They had a minor social arrangement, she said. That night, for example, Raymond and his sister had come in while she was eating supper. Then they had all sat down together and she had offered them a glass of wine.