In Your Defence

by Sarah Langford

  I looked up from writing down her evidence in my notebook. ‘Sorry, Miss White. I just want to make sure my note of your evidence is correct. You said – you and Raymond and Daniella all sat down at your table, together, that night, and you offered them some wine?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I usually have a bottle open somewhere. And then, you know, I would have had a puff of whatever, which we would have passed around between us.’ She let out a small cough and shifted slightly in her chair.

  And with a snap the piece clicked into place. I could not believe it had taken me so long to see it. Raymond was Mandy White’s drug dealer. These two young people were spending time with this odd and lonely woman because they were selling her weed. If they had sat down together at her table it was not because of some incongruous friendship, nor out of kindness or sympathy, but because she was buying their gear. The unmentionables were drugs and the debt was a drug debt. And I knew it by Mandy’s words. I had heard the phrasing so many times. I would have had a puff of whatever. We would have passed it round. Making the action sound theoretical when it was not, was a way of creating distance between someone’s actions and the resulting guilt they felt. That was why Raymond was hiding something; why I had glimpsed another story shimmering in between the one he had told me. For him to tell the truth, he would have to admit a crime with which he had not been charged. I thought how well he had done to get to twenty-one without any convictions for drug possession or supply. This is hard to do if that is how you make your living. I wondered whether, if he had had convictions for drugs, I might have spotted the link sooner.

  I looked across at Stanley Sharp, wondering if he too had realized the truth. He was sitting forward, his pen in his hand, his notebook open, although he had made few notes in it. Mandy – apparently oblivious to the repercussions of her words – went on to describe Raymond bringing the cardboard box from her bedroom through to her table. She agreed that she then helped them find the right lead for the DVD player from the box of tangled cords, because, she said, she did not want them left lying around afterwards. At this Stanley flipped his notebook shut and sat back heavily in his seat. I wondered if he would have thrown down his pen but for the stares of the jury following his every move. He glanced up at the clock and it seemed the judge noticed too.

  ‘Miss Langford, we are approaching the end of the day. Do you have much more?’

  No, I confirmed, I had all I needed. The judge nodded and said we would break overnight. Warning the jury not to speak to anyone about the case, nor to discuss it among themselves, he allowed them to file out of court. The usher returned to deliver Mandy’s frame back to her and help navigate her back through the courtroom. Packing up my papers, I turned to say something to Stanley, but he was already shoving open the courtroom’s swing doors, his gown billowing with the speed of his exit. On the bench behind me sat the police officer in the case. I had not noticed her before; she must have come in when I started cross-examining, I thought. I smiled at her, partly in greeting, partly in challenge. She shook her head, as though in recognition of the prosecution’s defeat. The dock officer began, loudly, to unlock the door of the dock and the noise made us both turn and watch as Raymond stepped out of it.

  ‘He’s not a bad kid that one, really. Especially, you know, given who his mum is,’ she said, still watching Raymond.

  I looked at the police officer without responding, and she turned to face me. I could see from her expression that she had thought I knew more than I did and was now embarrassed to have said it.

  ‘Who’s his mum?’ I asked, not caring that she clearly thought I should already know.

  She looked at me evenly. ‘Biggest dealer on their estate. Record as long as her arm. Anyway, I’d better, you know, go and find Mr Sharp …’ She nodded towards the court door, backing away. She turned and as she walked past Raymond, who was waiting for me at the back of court, I noticed the two share a look as if they knew one another; as if they knew something I did not. The warm feeling of victory that had wrapped itself around me evaporated as I realized that, in my haste and confidence, the real truth had completely eluded me. I picked up my papers and walked over to Raymond.

  ‘Look, we’ll take a theft.’

  It was the following morning, and Stanley Sharp and I were again standing by the robing-room door as other barristers brushed past us on their way in and out. Stanley had spent the last minute or so blustering through a speech that had seemed more for his benefit than mine. Of the evidence against my client versus the disaster of Mandy; of the fact that, no matter how odd her account, Mandy had said there was a theft – she had been consistent in her claim that Raymond had taken the DVD player and denied she had given it to him. Stanley’s face contorted as he lurched between needing to bolster his case and admit its failures. I could have, I supposed, hit back – pointed out the idiocy of Mandy’s story and her veiled admissions, but I knew not only that he already knew this, but also that he could just carry on. He could leave it up to me to say to the judge, at the end of the prosecution’s case, There is no case to answer here – you must throw it out!5 And, if the judge refused to do so, then my client would have to give evidence. If the jury then found my client not guilty, Stanley would be left with nothing, so he was trying to salvage what he could – to ensure he walked away with a conviction, even if it was as minor as a theft. A theft which, had Raymond originally been charged with it, was petty enough to have confined the case to the magistrates’ court. I told Stanley I would put it to my client and went to find Raymond.

  ‘Yeah. I’ll take it. I’ll take the theft.’

  We were sitting opposite one another in a conference room and I had barely begun the speech I intended to give. I needed to warn him, I said, of the delicate balancing of knowns and unknowns that must be weighed and considered before the offer of an alternative offence should be accepted. A conviction for a dishonesty offence, even if minor, was still a blot. It could make it hard to find work or to convince a future employer that he could be trusted. Any Community Order to which he might be sentenced was likely to last some time and, if he missed any appointments, he would be convicted of being in breach of the order and punished for that as well. Most important of all, it was an acceptance of guilt. By saying he was guilty of theft he was saying he stole, and he could not afterwards claim otherwise.

  Raymond listened, his face and body tense. He paused. I knew what he was thinking, because others had told me what it really felt like. To walk up the steps to the witness box whilst the jury stared and doubted you. To muddle your words and have them twisted by clever lawyers. To honour the frequent requests to keep your voice up, speak clearly, answer the question. But there was something else which I now knew Raymond feared: being asked to tell one story while he hid another. So instead, because of all this, he was going to plead to the theft. He was going to admit to something he didn’t do.

  His eyes fixed on me with an intensity that was almost overwhelming. It was all right for me, I thought, with my costume and the colour of my skin and my voice of confident authority, faked until it had become reality. When I stood up in court the worst a jury might think was What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? But Raymond had spent a lifetime trying to be invisible, to make no fuss, to be allowed to slip by without anyone noticing. Almost with a blow I was reminded how accident of birth, the tiny building blocks that made me and those numerous small twists of fate had meant that, when I stood up, the words I needed tumbled out and I was believed. I thought how hard it must be to enter the witness box and know you will be doubted before you have said a word. I realized how much harder this was if the truth lay within a tale you could not tell.

  Raymond and I left the conference room and went back into court. As I waited for the judge to come in I looked at the endorsement Raymond had just signed in my notebook, summarizing my advice, saying he was pleading of his own free will. Always get an endorsement. Make sure you are protected. Save your own skin. I sta
red at his signature underneath mine and could not help feeling that his plea was a sham, one in which I had colluded.

  The judge, having been updated on our change of plea by his clerk, had not recalled the jury. Stanley Sharp stood and gave a brief explanation before asking for a new charge of theft to be put to Raymond. In a quiet voice, but without hesitation, Raymond then spoke, for the first and last time in his trial, to say one word. Guilty. Stanley said that this plea was acceptable to the Crown and he therefore wished to withdraw the burglary charge. The judge, confirming that the stance taken by both sides was very proper, agreed. He then adjourned the case to allow Daniella and her black-haired, red-faced barrister to come back to court another day and stand alongside us. He allowed Daniella to retract her guilty plea to burglary and re-enter one to theft, then sentenced both defendants to twelve-month Community Orders.

  So, because Raymond could not find a way to tell his story, his story told him. I didn’t ask him if he was collecting drug debts on behalf of his mother; whether the messages on his phone gave this away and this was why he could not use it to prove that Mandy had called him. I didn’t ask if this was why he could be sure that his mother would never have come to court on his behalf. Nor did I ask whether he had lied in his first interview to protect her, or because she had been in the house when he was being interviewed and he had been afraid. And there was no one to ask why, if Mandy had given Raymond the DVD player in lieu of a drug debt, she had then called the police. Was it because she had assumed they had simply given her the drugs and felt aggrieved when they said she now had to pay for them? Or was it that she knew these two young people could not tell the truth about why they were at her flat without admitting another crime? Did she want to be able to claim compensation for the DVD player that they had taken, or was it actually because this case gave her a chance to be the object of sympathy rather than derision for a while?6 I did not know for sure, nor would I ever know. As with so many of my cases, I had to learn to live without a tidy ending.

  After the sentencing hearing I drove slowly around the row of mini-roundabouts towards the motorway. I could not shake off a sense that I had forgotten one of the most important lessons my job had taught me. There was no one truth, there was no one story. Instead there were, behind every case, just webs of messy lives. To look for the truth in a case was to forget my role. It was my responsibility to guide those who came my way as best I could through the law and its systems, with humanity and empathy. It was my job to give them, as far as I was able, what they wanted. And I must try to do this even when what they wanted was not always, in the end, actually justice.

  5

  Rita

  Salisbury Crown Court

  Archbold Criminal Pleading Evidence and Practice

  33–37 Spouses and civil partners

  A husband and wife are not guilty of conspiracy if they alone are parties to the agreement …

  Where husband and wife are charged with conspiring with another, the jury should be directed to acquit the husband and wife if they are not satisfied that there was another party to the conspiracy …

  NICK JOHNSON DREW back his arm and, with controlled force, struck the pane of glass with the crowbar. Alongside him in the darkness stood Lee Poulter, his feet planted in the sodden earth of a flowerbed, trampling new green shoots. He held a felt blanket over the window to muffle the blow as the metal of the crowbar connected, catching glass splinters within its fabric which otherwise might have attached themselves to his clothes. Carefully, Nick tapped off the larger shards that had been left hanging like teeth in the frame. Lee climbed slowly through the opening, his gloved fingers carefully bearing his weight on the sill as he avoided the sharp edges. He took the rucksack that Nick passed through and started to unpack it – pillowcases, bleach, cloths. Nick then followed him through the window and into the room of the modest terraced house on Hawthorne Drive, his shoe leaving the ghost of an impression in the earth behind him.

  It was not the first time that week, nor that night, that this routine had taken place. In the preceding days the two men had slipped their way into the homes and lives of twenty families. They had rifled through the memories and treasures of people they would never meet, pulling out the drawers they thought may hold what they wanted and scattering their contents in the hope of finding it. They filled pillowcases with DVD players, Xboxes, laptops, iPads. Cameras with pictures of holidays and newborn babies, Christmas and birthday presents, all tangled together. They took identities: credit cards, driving licences, passports, birth certificates. And when they could not find these they stole toy-car collections, cufflinks and tie pins, coins and stamps, engagement rings, engraved hip flasks, silver frames and trinket boxes etched with messages of love. Sometimes, as the men wordlessly demolished a home, its occupants were present. On one night a young girl and her father slept through the invasion until he, disturbed by something unidentifiable, woke and went downstairs to discover the fresh devastation. In another home a grandmother slept. When morning came and she wandered into her living room to find it unrecognizable, she feared the dementia she so dreaded had come for her at last.

  But the house on Hawthorne Drive was deserted. Still holding the crowbar, Nick went into the bedroom, his path lit by the beam of his torch. Searching the wardrobe, he pushed aside shirts to reach into the dark corners where people so often hide their treasures. Unexpectedly, his fingers touched a large, sharp-cornered cabinet, standing as high as his waist, the coldness of the metal muted by the wool of his glove. He slid his hands over it, tracing where it was bolted through the back of the wardrobe to the wall behind. He felt the edge of a door and further down the lock that held it fast.

  The two men wrestled with the cabinet for some time. They teased and banged the edge of the door, trying to prise it open with tools they found in the house. Finally, the metal wrenched and twisted and they were able to reach inside to lift out their reward. Guns. As he passed the weapons to Lee, Nick tried to weigh them up in the orange streetlight streaming through the window. His inexperienced eye failed to see any real difference between them: some with fine triggers and delicate engraving, the longer air rifles, the semi-automatic shotguns. Once the cabinet was empty, the men allowed themselves a pause to gaze at the weapons laid out on the carpet of the bedroom and a thrill passed between them.

  Her mind elsewhere, Rita unlocked her front door and opened it. On her way home from the Job Centre it had begun to drizzle and thin strands of blonde hair clung to her face. She paused in the doorway, blinking, giving herself time for her eyes to adjust to the interior gloom. The narrow hallway was windowless and dark. Three rooms ran off it: a living room, a dining room and a small galley kitchen. All but the last were filled with bags and boxes, the curtains drawn, as they always were, despite the time of day. At the end was a small staircase, the varnished pine banister bearing the scuffs of the house’s previous occupants. At the bottom of the stairs, their barrels leaning against the banister, were two shotguns.

  Rita stared at them. She let the string bag she was carrying drop with a soft thud on to the doormat. Forgetting to close the door, she walked to the stairs. Reaching out, she touched the metal of one of the barrels with her fingertips. She was surprised at how cool and hard it was – much colder than she had expected. She felt sick.

  ‘Mum?’ It was Stevie calling from his bedroom. She could hear the muted noises of the game he was playing.

  ‘Where’s your dad? Where’s Aimee?’ Her throat felt tight and her voice sounded too high.

  ‘Dad’s asleep up here. Aimee’s with Nan – she’s dropping her off later. When’s tea ready?’

  Rita became aware of a chill and realized the front door was still open. ‘Soon,’ she called. She walked down the hallway, picked up the bag still slumped on the mat, closed the door, went to the kitchen and turned on the oven.

  Around mid-afternoon the next day, Nick was playing computer games in his living room with Lee when a dozen plain-clothes pol
ice officers broke down their door. At first Rita was unsure whether it was the police or a gang coming to claim back their weapons and she found herself wondering, for a moment, which was worse. A pair of officers took Lee back to his own house three streets away. Rita and Nick sat in silence on the sofa, their two children between them, waiting for Rita’s mother to come and collect them. Rita could barely bring herself to look at her mother when, escorted by the police officer who had opened the door, she came into the living room and took the overnight bag from her daughter’s hand.

  The night seemed to go on for ever. The police worked around Rita and Nick, emptying every cupboard and drawer in the house. The scene felt surreal to Rita, as though she and Nick were the victims. Sometimes an officer would ask what an item was, where it had come from, and she would force down her fear and try to focus on what they were showing her. A few times she became convinced that there was a receipt, somewhere in the chaos, and they let her sift through paperwork, standing behind her, watching her as she tried not to let panic blur the words on the slips of paper she was looking at.