Guilty Not Guilty

by Felix Francis

  Another sip of water.

  ‘The term beyond reasonable doubt is one that my learned friend has raised with you. “What is beyond reasonable doubt?” I hear you ask. So I will tell you. It is the burden and standard of proof that you must apply in this case. In order to convict you have to be sure, not just almost sure, that the defendant has performed the actions of which he is accused. If you only think that he might have done them, or even that he probably did them, then that is not good enough and you must acquit. In order to convict, you must be sure he did them.’

  The eel is good, I thought.

  No reasonable doubt about that.

  ‘And I put it to you, members of the jury, that you cannot be sure of what happened in that kitchen on that fateful morning, you cannot be sure that Mrs Gordon-Russell wasn’t already dead by the time the defendant arrived at her house, you cannot be sure that the van driven by the defendant did collide with a car driven by Mr Gordon-Russell, and you cannot be sure that Mrs Mary Bradbury didn’t give a hundred thousand pounds to her only son. And, because you cannot be sure of any of these things, it is your solemn duty to return three verdicts of not guilty.’

  He sat down. His time was up too.

  I was totally confused. And if I was, then how were the jury faring? They were the ones that now had to make the decisions and I had absolutely no idea of what was going on in their minds.

  I was thinking that an acquittal was back to being odds-on favourite.

  Next it was the judge’s turn.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ he said, turning towards them. ‘You and I have separate functions in this trial. My job is twofold. Firstly, to rule on all aspects of the law to ensure a fair hearing for the defendant, and secondly, to sum up the evidence and give you direction in the law to assist you in reaching your verdict. Your function, however, is to determine the facts in the case. The facts are your domain, and solely yours.’

  He paused and looked at each of them in turn.

  ‘You have heard the closing speeches of the prosecution and the defence counsels but those were just that, speeches. They are not evidence in this case. The evidence is what you have heard from the witness box, or read in the uncontested evidence bundle provided to you by the prosecution. You have the responsibility of deciding upon the evidence that has been brought before you, and only upon that evidence, whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty of the offences of which he has been accused.’

  He paused again.

  ‘Now that all the evidence has been heard, and the prosecution and defence counsels have addressed their arguments to you as to the conflicting conclusions they would each ask you to draw from that evidence, I will give you directions upon the law, which you are required to apply.

  ‘The prosecution have the burden of proving the guilt of the defendant. That burden never shifts. The defence at no stage in this case have to prove anything whatsoever to you. Before you can convict the defendant on any of the counts, the prosecution have to satisfy you so that you are sure that he is guilty of that count. If you are sure, you convict him. If you are not, you acquit him. That is all there is to it.

  ‘Let me deal with the three indictments in turn. First, on the matter of the theft, there is no dispute that the defendant did receive a payment of one hundred thousand pounds from Mr Newbould. The only matter in contention is whether that payment was known to Mrs Mary Bradbury and, furthermore, if she had then sanctioned it as a gift to her son. If you think that the defendant and his wife may be telling the truth when they say that the hundred thousand was a gift, then you must find him not guilty. If, on the other hand, you believe the evidence given concerning Mrs Mary Bradbury’s belief that it was stolen, and also that you are sure the defendant knowingly kept the payment for himself even though he was fully aware that he was not entitled to it, then you must find him guilty of theft.’

  The judge took a drink of water.

  ‘Secondly, let me turn to the attempted murder charge. There is agreement between the prosecution and defence concerning the fact that the defendant drove a white Ford Transit van from London to Banbury. Even though he initially denied the fact to the police, and you may apply whatever weight to that denial as you may decide, he now admits that he was the driver of the van and he was in the vicinity of the crash in which Mr Gordon-Russell was seriously injured. You don’t have to worry about whether that bit is true. It is. What is in dispute is whether he was the cause of the crash. If you think that the defendant’s account may be true and that he did not crash into the car, and that he damaged the van later by striking a concrete post in Harrow, then you should find him not guilty.’

  There was a hefty degree of scepticism in his tone.

  ‘However, if you believe the prosecution’s claim that he was responsible for the crash and that the white paint found on the rear of Mr Gordon-Russell’s car was from the van that the defendant was driving, and you are sure, not only that the defendant did purposely crash into the car, but also that he did so in an attempt, not just to injure Mr Gordon-Russell but to kill him, then you should find him guilty of attempted murder.

  ‘Now let us turn to the murder itself. The prosecution have told you that the defendant had both the opportunity and the motive to have carried out this murder. It has been established by a forensic expert that the defendant’s DNA was present on the victim’s neck and on the dog lead used to strangle her. This is not contested by the defence. What is in contention is whether Mrs Gordon-Russell was alive or dead when the defendant arrived at her house. If you think that the defendant may be telling the truth that she was already dead when he arrived and that someone else was responsible, then you should find him not guilty. If, however, you believe that the defendant is lying and you are sure that he did, in fact, break in and strangle Mrs Gordon-Russell, then you should find him guilty of murder.

  ‘Now, members of the jury,’ went on the judge, ‘you will retire to consider your verdicts. You should elect a foreman from your number who will act as a conduit for your discussion and your spokesperson, but be aware that each of you has an equal voice and your deliberations should be as a complete jury of twelve. Do not split up into smaller groups, or discuss matters when some of you are not present. By a process of discussion of the evidence, the group of twelve of you must decide, after applying the law as I have directed you, whether your verdict should be guilty or not guilty on each count, and it should be the verdict of you all. You may have heard of something called a majority verdict, but that does not apply in this case. If, at some time in the future, it does become relevant, then I will give you the necessary direction in the law. Until that time, I require a unanimous decision.’

  The usher then led the jury out of the court.

  I watched them go, trying but failing to read what was going on in their minds. One or two of them glanced across at Joe sitting in the dock behind the glass but, even then, I found it impossible to discern if they were pro or anti.

  Now it was up to them.

  What had Douglas said? In my experience, juries are always a bit of a lottery.

  My own profession was all about measuring chance and calculating probability, but still I had little or no idea what would happen.

  Would the jury believe Joe or not? He had certainly been resolute and unwavering about finding Amelia already dead. And I had to admit he’d been fairly convincing on that point, even if his hitting-the-concrete-post-with-the-van story had been far more suspect.

  All we could do was wait for the jury to decide.

  Now where was my money?

  41

  And wait we did. For hours. No ‘seventeen or twenty-seven minutes of deliberation’ in this murder trial.

  ‘Is it a good sign or a bad one?’ I asked DS Dowdeswell.

  ‘You never can tell,’ he replied unhelpfully. ‘Juries are a law unto themselves. But if they’re spending the time reading through all those nasty emails, it might be a good one.’

 
We waited.

  And then we waited some more.

  ‘I wonder what they’re saying in there,’ I said absentmindedly.

  ‘We will never know,’ said the detective. ‘Unlike in the United States where jurors are interviewed on television after high-profile cases, and some of them even write books about their jury deliberations, here they are not allowed to speak about it – not then, not ever.’

  We went on waiting.

  At the end of the day the judge had the jury brought back into court.

  ‘Members of the jury,’ he said. ‘I am going to send you home now for the night. You will reconvene here tomorrow morning at ten o’clock to continue your deliberations. Please take note, you must not discuss the case with anyone else, not anyone else at all, and that includes your family. Nor are you at liberty to discuss it between yourselves unless all twelve of you are together in the jury room. And, as I have told you before, you must not seek to discover any details of this case in the newspapers, on the television or radio, or via the internet or social media. To do any of those things would be to hold this court in contempt and may make you subject to imprisonment.’

  And, with that dire warning still ringing in their ears, the twelve trooped out of the court.

  *

  As on most nights during the trial, I went home by taxi to the Old Forge.

  This waiting and not knowing was interminable torture but, if it was bad for me, it must be so much worse for Joe. I almost felt sorry for him, but only almost. He had brought all of this on himself. I just hoped that the jury could see through his lies and protestations.

  I kicked my heels around the house all evening and wondered if I would still be living here a year from now. My love for the place had evaporated on that October morning, and it had never returned.

  Maybe I’d move back to London.

  A new home? A new job? A new life?

  Same old heartache.

  I tried to watch some television but I was too nervous to concentrate. I went to bed but I couldn’t sleep. By the early hours, when I finally dozed off, I had convinced myself that the jury would find him innocent.

  What would I do then?

  *

  By lunchtime of the second day of jury deliberation, I was almost climbing the walls with tension, fear and frustration, at least I would have been if my legs had been working correctly. As it was, I couldn’t even pace up and down properly to rid myself of the nervous energy.

  Why was the jury taking so long? What were they doing in there?

  Midway through the afternoon, the judge called them back into court to ask how things were going and whether it was likely that they would be able to reach a decision on which they were all agreed.

  The foreman stood up. He was the man who had been in shorts and flip-flops for much of the trial but now was wearing a sober shirt and trousers, maybe in deference to his position. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think we may be able to reach verdicts if given a little more time.’

  So the judge sent them back to the jury room.

  And his intervention must have galvanised their thinking because, less than an hour later, word came through that the jury were ready with their verdicts.

  I wasn’t.

  My heart was beating nineteen to the dozen and, as I took my seat in the court, I could hardly breathe.

  Everyone took their allotted places and, when all were ready, the jury were brought in.

  Douglas had told me that he reckoned he could always tell if the jury were going to give a ‘not guilty’ verdict. ‘They will look at the defendant,’ he’d said. ‘If it’s guilty they tend to keep their eyes down.’

  But I couldn’t tell however hard I tried by watching them walk in. Most of them just looked at the judge.

  When they were all seated, the clerk of the court stood up and turned to them. ‘Would the foreman of the jury please stand.’

  He did so.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ said the clerk. ‘Have you reached verdicts on the indictments upon which you are all agreed?

  ‘Yes,’ replied the foreman.

  ‘To my next questions,’ said the clerk, ‘only answer guilty or not guilty: on count one, theft, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Not guilty.’

  NOT GUILTY!

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Were the jury stupid or something? Hadn’t they been listening? How could they not find him guilty based on the evidence?

  I glanced briefly at Joe in the dock and he was smiling.

  I felt sick.

  I could hear the blood rushing in my head and my hands were shaking. Was this all going to be for nothing?

  But the court clerk moved swiftly on regardless.

  ‘On count two, attempted murder, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Guilty.’

  I hardly heard it, such was my panic. I looked again at Joe. He wasn’t smiling now. And we weren’t finished yet.

  ‘On count three, murder, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’

  I held my breath and my heart pounded even more. I really had no idea which way it would go.

  The foreman stood bolt upright facing the judge.

  ‘Guilty.’

  It felt to me that he had said it in slow motion, the word seemingly stretched over several seconds.

  I started breathing again, letting out a small sigh of satisfaction.

  But the reaction from the dock was far more dramatic.

  Joe stood up and banged on the glass with his hands while shouting at the jury. ‘No. No. You’re wrong. You’re wrong. I never killed her. It was him.’ He pointed at me. ‘He killed her. It wasn’t me. He did it.’

  The two security guards in the dock moved quickly to either side of Joe and they manhandled him back into his seat, where he sat in a heap.

  He started crying.

  The judge just watched and waited for calm to be restored. Contrary to popular belief, judges in British courts don’t have gavels to bang as they do in the United States.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ he said finally, facing them. ‘Thank you for your diligence in this trial and for doing your duty as citizens. You are hereby discharged.’

  Then he turned to the body of the court.

  ‘This case is now adjourned until tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock, when sentence will be passed.’

  After all that waiting, the verdicts had been over so quickly.

  It felt surreal.

  ‘All rise,’ shouted the usher and we all did, except for Joe, who remained seated with his head down. He was then led away by the security guards, out through the door at the back of the dock.

  I watched him being taken away with a mixed bag of emotions: disbelief that he had been found not guilty of the theft; pleasure that he’d at least been convicted of murder and attempted murder; anger at what he’d done to Amelia; plus a huge amount of sorrow.

  And the sorrow won.

  How had we come to this?

  Joe and I had once been good friends, so much so that I had nearly asked him to be my best man at my wedding. And Amelia and I had both been so pleased when his and Rachael’s girls had been born, revelling in being an uncle and aunt, even if we couldn’t be parents ourselves.

  And, now, all of that was gone for ever.

  Amelia was dead and Joe was facing a life term in prison.

  After the apparent disaster of her testimony, Rachael hadn’t returned to the court and she hadn’t been present for the verdict. But her life, too, had been destroyed. As had her children’s. They would now have no father around during their formative years, with only infrequent visits to see him in prison to look forward to.

  The whole situation was a complete tragedy for all of us.

  There was nothing to celebrate.

  Not that that stopped DS Dowdeswell from doing so.

  ‘What a great result,’ he said to me, all smiles, slapping me on the back ou
tside the court.

  ‘I can’t believe he was acquitted of the theft.’

  ‘The jury may have thought the money was a gift,’ said the DS, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘But don’t worry about that. Bradbury was convicted of the other two, and they were the big ones. You must be so pleased.’

  How could I tell him that I wasn’t?

  ‘I suppose I’m happy it’s finally over,’ I said.

  But was I?

  The build-up and then the trial itself had given me a purpose in life. Now, with the delivery of the jury’s verdicts, it had suddenly finished, and in spite of mostly getting the result I wanted, I was already feeling a sense of loss.

  ‘I expect you’ll be reading your Victim Personal Statement to the court in the morning prior to sentencing,’ said the detective.

  I shook my head. ‘I haven’t written one.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘What good would it do?’

  ‘You could explain to the judge how much the attempted murder has caused you such physical pain and hardship, and also how your wife’s murder has affected your life and made it so much worse.’

  It had certainly done that.

  ‘He’ll get a life sentence anyway,’ I said. ‘All murderers do.’

  ‘But the judge also has to decide the minimum term. Your statement might make a difference to the length of that.’

  Did I really want that responsibility?

  ‘There’s still time,’ said the DS enthusiastically. ‘You can do it tonight.’

  ‘I suppose I could,’ I replied, but without his eagerness.

  ‘Great. I’ll make sure the CPS know it’s coming.’

  *

  My cheerful taxi driver dropped me outside the Old Forge.

  ‘Same time tomorrow?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, please,’ I replied. ‘But it will be the last day.’

  I wasn’t sure whether he was pleased or not. For him, the trial had been a nice little earner, with guaranteed journeys to and from Oxford.

  I paid his fare and went into the house. As always, it was cold and quiet, in spite of the warmth of the day.

  Perhaps I should have been elated. At long last, Joe was going to get his just deserts. But it did nothing for me. The torment of loneliness continued.