‘I couldn’t. They wouldn’t let me.’
‘Oh.’
She paused and now I see the eyes are spilling out water for real. ‘Why didn’t you go? You could have gone.’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘I left you the money. And the Baikal. I thought –’
‘That I’d leave you?’ I go.
‘No. That you’d save yourself.’
‘It’s not that black and white though is it? Someone has to stay behind and pay the bill,’ I say.
And then she was gone.
Break: 10:45
40
12:30
PROSECUTION COUNSEL:
Members of the jury, in Hertford, Herefordshire and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen. Here at the Central Criminal Court, a second prosecution closing speech hardly ever happens. It is happening now, however, at the direction of the learned Judge.
This is an unusual case.
Not because it involves the deliberate and planned murder of a teenaged boy. Not even because it involves a murder committed with a firearm. Sadly, in London, the shooting of young men by other young men with lethal weapons has become an all too familiar story. No, this case is unusual because the Defendant in this case elected to deliver his own closing speech. He has been speaking to you now for some days. That in itself is unusual.
Unfortunately, however, the Defendant in his speech has referred to facts upon which he now relies, but which he didn’t mention in his evidence. Much of what he has said is completely new. You haven’t heard it before. I haven’t heard it before now. Which means that he hasn’t been cross-examined about the things he is now telling you. That puts you, members of the jury, at a great disadvantage. For how, unless you have heard his evidence being tested in cross-examination, do you assess the quality of it? In other words how do you form a judgement about its reliability? How can you be sure if it is true?
This is why with the agreement and support of the Judge I now address you for a second time. However, to preserve the Defendant’s legal right to the final word, he is also to be permitted to address you, in reply to the prosecution speech.
I’m not going to go over everything that the Defendant has said. That would be to insult your intelligence. You have just heard everything he has to say. It is not for me simply to contradict what he says. You can see for yourselves where the weaknesses lie and it is for you to make of them what you will. No. I just make a few points for you to consider. As before. Accept them if you agree with them. Ignore them if you don’t.
It is important that we are absolutely clear about this from the start. We the Prosecution say that everything the Defendant has told you in his defence is a lie.
He lied in his interview with the police and he repeated those lies from the witness box when he gave evidence. Now though we have a whole new set of lies. Different lies from his evidence. Different lies from his interview. But, we say, lies nonetheless. From a Defendant who is, quite literally, making it up as he goes along.
Let us pause, if we may, to examine this recently invented story a little more thoroughly. Here are the problems you may think that the Defendant faces.
Firstly, there is no evidence at all that the gentleman, whom the Defendant is only able to name by the pseudonym, Face was shot dead, as the Defendant now claims. There is no, and I pause to emphasize this point, there is no evidence that this man even existed because the Defendant can tell us nothing else about this other, allegedly murdered, man. No evidence that drug dealers or indeed anybody was shot in a nightclub of the name identified by the Defendant, in the circumstances he relays. None. Not a shred, not a scrap. It is not simply invention, ladies and gentlemen, it is pure, uncorroborated fiction.
If two men, nay even one man, were to be shot dead in a nightclub, you can be sure, can you not, that there would be some evidence to support it? A police report perhaps? Or is it, as the Defendant would no doubt have you believe, a result of some sinister conspiracy by MI5 that the details have eluded the police? What about the press? Not a single news report or headline or column exists of a story describing the events that the Defendant has told you. Have they too been silenced by MI5?
And what about the mysterious and beguiling Kira? Where is she? Indeed who is she? Does she exist? Are we really being expected to believe that she, the Defendant’s girlfriend, was some kind of assassin recruited by the Secret Services? Never, I venture to suggest, has such unadulterated rubbish been heard in a court of law. It is not simply rubbish. It is an insult. To this court. To you.
And I finish this mercifully short address by making just two final comments. We say they are decisive. If, as the Defendant has suggested, he was prepared to shoot dead two men with a nine millimetre pistol, in cold blood, what does that tell you about the lengths to which he is prepared to go to for his own ends? Does it, ultimately, even if your credulity can be stretched to the extent that the Defendant has attempted to stretch it, help him? Or does the fact that he was prepared to murder two men convict him of the murder with which he stands charged before you?
And we finish with this question. Why has not one word of this story been repeated by the one person who could corroborate this? Curt, who might have been able to help you, has conveniently vanished. What a shame for this Defendant. Kira also has vanished and now has an imagined new identity. But there is one person who has not vanished. She indeed has been in this courtroom all along. The Defendant’s sister, Blessing. Why have you not heard from her? After all, it seems, at long last, she now speaks. But not to you, ladies and gentlemen. Not to you.
Luncheon adjournment: 13:05
41
14:10
DEFENDANT:
He is basically right innit. Everything he says is basically true. I ain’t got no proof of nothing. He says that Ki don’t exist. I got no proof to show you that she does exist. And MI5 ain’t dumb enough to leave any records of her visit to the prison. If I had known that he was going to say them things then maybe I could have brought some evidences about her. I could have brought you pictures but you know what, if I had brought them, he would have said, ‘How do we know that isn’t just some next girl you took a picture of?’ If I brought in her birth certificate even, he could have said, ‘Yeah that is just someone called that name. How do we know you know her even?’ This could go on and on. At the end of the day some things though, you got to take on trust. Some things I take on trust too.
I take on trust that the world is round. I can’t see it round with my own eyes but I take a picture’s word for it. I take on trust that Obama is a real person in America. I ain’t never seen him for real. I ain’t even ever seen anyone who saw him for real. I seen him on some TV screen. I am being told that he was a president or whatever. I don’t know for sure that he was. I don’t know for sure that this man here is a QC. He tells me he is and I take that. So now I am in the same boat and I am asking you to take a seat on my boat. Take it on trust. You can take some things on trust.
Ki used to read a lot of history books and shit. Henry the this and his twelve wives and whatever. And in them books there is always a bit in it where you get told this king had this advisor and this many servants and this is what they did here and what they did there and this is what this guy had for breakfast and rah rah rah. And I always said to her, how the fuck they know that? She used to say back, they work it all out from other stuff. They find a painting here and it shows some guy. Then in a writing somewhere they have a description of an advisor and then someone says, hang on, maybe it’s that guy in that painting. Then someone else goes, well he’s holding a couple of dead ducks in that hand. And then he says, oh he must like shooting. And then another guy goes, well he’s definitely shot two there so he must be a good shot. And then someone else goes, look at what he’s looking at, he is looking at that little boy, oh he must be a paedophile or whatever. What I think is that’s bullshit. What I think is that it’s quite a good story of what the shit could mean but it’s n
ot proof is it?
So I kind of got a problem innit? What makes my story the real one of what shit actually went down? Everything I said is just like the history books. It’s just joining the dots but it might not be the real picture. I say to you that this thing happened and then the next thing happened and this is why it happened. But it don’t mean that the shit actually happened. It just means that I said it happened like that. That probably don’t mean shit at the end of the day. It’s just a theory. So I’m kind of shafted innit?
But then, the prosecution and the way they are saying what they are saying happened is the same kind of shit innit? It’s all just a theory. They can’t prove that I shot Jamil because they don’t have any witnesses to that shooting at the end of the day. They can’t prove that my blood got there the way they say because they don’t have a witness to say, ‘Oh this is how he got the blood on him.’ They can’t say that the firearm discharge residue was because of me shooting him or someone else shooting him, like Kira, wearing that top or me wearing it when I carried Jamil out of the trap. They can’t show nothing for sure. They can’t even prove that what I am saying never happened and what I am saying about how it happened didn’t happen in that way. They can’t show you an evidence to prove that Ki did not exist or Curt or Face or Guilty.
So where we at now? Everything just becomes about maybes. Maybe this happened. Maybe that happened. But what’s the good of that? It ain’t no good to have maybes. Like the prosecution said, you got to be sure, not maybe sure.
There a few things you can be sure about though. First is that Jamil was shot dead. The second thing is that out of all the people in this room, only I know for sure how he was killed. Even the prosecution have to agree with that. Either I shot him or I was there when he was shot by Kira. The third thing is that there is thirty thousand quid in my flat. What the prosecution can’t say is what their theory is about how I got that cash. The only theory you got is mine or some other theory you can think of. But what else could be the reason I got the money? Did I rob a bank? Did I win the lottery? It’s got to have come from somewhere innit?
Then there is this next thing. Jamil got shot for a reason. People don’t usually get shot for no reasons. Again the prosecution is saying that they don’t need to prove motive or whatever. But what kind of sense is that? There has to be a reason and the only reason you got is the one I gave you – because just saying someone is ‘waste’ don’t mean nothing. That ain’t a reason to kill a person.
I know what I told you is the truth. Do you know what though, at the end of the day, maybe none of it matters. I’m half in the mind of just putting my hands up to this and saying I did it.
If I admitted I shot him, would that make it easier for you? Would you be able to walk away from this with a clear conscience and think to yourself, ‘We did the right thing?’ Okay then I did it. I shot him up. He was a waste man. He pissed me off or whatever and I killed him with my Baikal. Shot him dead. On the streets. Wearing my Chinese-writing made-in-Taiwan hoodie. I jumped in a cab. I bought a ticket to Spain and was going to go and fly off. I ain’t sure where I got the thirty gees but who cares about that? And I ain’t sure why I didn’t go to Spain. And I ain’t sure why I didn’t go on the run with my thirty gees instead of waiting there for the police to come arrest me. And I ain’t sure why I left the gun in the flat. But they got me banged to rights.
So now what? Are you happy now? You know I get life for this, is that a fair thing in your mind? Is just the fact that I shot him make it fair to lock me up for the rest of my life? What if it was you? But it wasn’t never going to be you though was it? You was never going to be meeting him on your front door. You don’t have to deal with no drug dealers on your street. You got better things to do. You got jobs and bare opportunities. What do I have?
The only thing I had was Ki and she’s gone. And whether you believe in Ki or not, you can believe that she was a real person. She came into my life on a bus and changed my life. Then she left. Like that. I get what the prosecution is saying. But you can believe that she exists. Or if not, that someone like her does exist whatever her name might be. It’s not impossible is it that I was in love with a girl who changed everything for me?
But it’s the whole MI5 thing. You can’t believe that.
But here’s the thing. You can if you want to.
You do believe that MI5 does exist. You can believe that MI5 can get up to some shady things. You know they are secret but you also know that people have to be working there. You know that there are somewhere in the world some real people who are MI5 and that MI5 does its shit and when it does the shit happens the way it has to – and it’s secret. And you don’t want to know the details. Fuck even I don’t want to know the details. But you still want the shit to be done.
Don’t let him fool you innit. He says them three little letters in a way that makes them so big. ‘M’ – ‘I’ – ‘5’. And the way he says it makes me wonder whether MI5 even exists at all. He makes it sound like he has just said ‘The X-Men’. But you know MI5 is a real thing. So what is so wrong about them putting a bit of quiet pressure on some next girl so they can do their thing? They know her weaknesses. They know about Spooks. They can disappear him. Keep him safe. Keep her safe. Keep them unknown.
And if you stop and think about it, you know this shit happens. I mean actually happens. Just think about that Russian man, Litvinenko. He was poisoned with like a uranium or some shit at the tip of an umbrella. In broad daylight. And we know this happened. We know he was assassinated. And it sounds all James Bond and even though we know it happened and we know it happened probably lots of times before then, we don’t want to believe it. It fucks with our happiness. We would rather believe that some white lady that looks like a teacher runs our country and that only ordinary boring things happen here like NHS or cuts or what have you. But shit is darker than that. Even I don’t want to believe it. I want someone to say that it’s all conspiracy theory and our world isn’t like that. But it is. And it is like that a thousand more times over because most of the shit you can believe is shit we will never know about. Shit that we will never be allowed to know about.
So here we are members of the jury. When I started off this speech I never thought I could do no five-hour speech like Palmerston. But shit, I did ten days. Maybe not as good as he would have. Maybe not with all the smooth words that can make you think of a higher cause like he did. I can’t even match in days what this prosecutor said just now in ten minutes. It’s like he just exploded my whole speech. That is the power of a person who can use his words. But I am glad I did my speech at the end of the day, because I worked something out while I was telling you all this. I worked out what he meant – that guy in the mosque when he said all people ain’t the same but that they could be. I ain’t the same as you, and you ain’t the same as me, but you could be too if you tried.
So try now. Try and be me.
Up to you innit at the end of the day.
Guilty or not guilty?
JURY OUT:
IN THE CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT T2017229
Before: HIS HONOUR JUDGE SALMON QC
* * *
Verdict:
* * *
Trial: Day 39
Tuesday 18th July 2017
APPEARANCES
For the Prosecution: Mr C. Salfred QC
For the Defendant: In person
Transcribed from a digital audio recording by
T. J. Nazarene Limited
Official Court Reporters and Tape Transcribers
Author’s Note
In the course of the last quarter of a century, I have met thousands of people from all walks of life, caught up in the criminal justice system.
One of the things that you pick up quickly as a criminal barrister is that intelligence is not necessarily synonymous with education, nor are the two things always interchangeable. So many times I encountered brilliant young men without a singl
e qualification. Youths who could construct poetry on the spot but who called it rap. Lads who understood difficult legal concepts easily once you broke it down to them and, most surprising of all, boys who could dissect the evidence in their cases like professionals.
This point was brought home to me one day when a young man I was representing was being cross-examined about the location of his mobile telephone using cell-site technology. The case was a serious one involving an allegation of robbery and was being prosecuted by experienced Counsel. It soon became clear that the defendant had so thoroughly mastered the experts’ reports that the Crown could not lay a glove on him. It was at once an impressive display and a salutary lesson.
After this, I always made sure to keep an open mind about all of my clients. I also tried to remember that behind the pink ribbon of a brief lay the freedom of a real person who deserved every ounce of effort on their behalf. One day many years ago, after I finished a closing speech on behalf of a client, a young man accused of dealing drugs, he came to me to thank me for my speech. I remember that he said he was grateful because he felt he could not have said what needed to be said in the way that I had. That stuck with me and over the years I wondered why it was that a defendant could not say what he needed to say. We have the best criminal justice system in the world in trial by jury. Trial by jury itself, being in theory a trial by one’s peers. However, the reality is that young disadvantaged males from difficult social and personal backgrounds are not usually tried by people like them.
I began then to wonder what it would be like if those accused of crimes were tried by people like them. And if that were to happen, how a speech made by such a person might sound. And although I sometimes felt moved by what I was being told by defendants about their lives, and what seemed to me to be the inevitability of their situations, I was unable to express it in the way that they had done to me. My dilemma was how to move the court in the same way that a defendant had moved me.
You Don't Know Me: A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Choice Page 26