RUSSELL WINNOCK
Confessions of a Barrister
The Friday Project
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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www.harpercollins.co.uk
This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015
Copyright © Russell Winnock 2015
Cover illustration © Katie May
Russell Winnock asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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Source ISBN: 9780008100346
Ebook Edition © August 2015 ISBN: 9780008100339
Version: 2015-09-15
Dedication
To my Dad, who taught me to always try to look after
those who struggle to look after themselves
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Disclaimer
Brian Fordyke
How do you defend someone who you know is guilty?
Chambers
Wigs, gowns, three-piece suitsand my blue bag
Pupilage and Ronnie Sherman
What’s the difference between a solicitor and a barrister?
West v West
NIHWTLBOE
Instinct and the case of Harvey Mannerley
The ten greatest trials of all time
Dinners, beers and ‘what would you do if you weren’t a barrister?’
The importance of pages
A tale of three Judges
Part 1 – His Honour Judge Percy and the case of Tommy Nutall
Part 2 – His Honour Judge Marmaduke and the case of Peter Hilton
Part 3 – Judge Mariner QC and thecase of Yusuf Salam
The kangaroo court of Lincoln Prison
Escape from Lincoln Prison
A chambers meeting
R v Kenny McCloud
The ten greatest fictional lawyers
Meeting Kenny McCloud
Cross-examination and the case of Shandra Whithurst
The City Magistrates Court
The Magistrates Court in the country
The fall of Kenny McCloud
STRIKE!
Football, violence, and the case of Archie Finch
The unwilling criminal
Wigs and gowns
Murder
Facebook
The case of the sizzling Gypsy sisters
Bail
Silk
The ten greatest Crown Courts in the land
The Court of Appeal and the case of R v J (a minor)
The case against Tasha Roux
Girls
Touting and solicitor’s wars
The case according to Tasha Roux
Self-defence and politicians
Consent
Domestic violence and the case of Carl and Leanne Stafford
Bradley Edwards and the ‘Furry Fuckers’
The story of Charlie Parkman QC
The queue at HMP Stoneywood and the case of Sam Wheldon
Disclosure
Goodbye to Johnny Richardson and hello to Lilly Spencer
Bad character
The trial of Tasha Roux day one – the robing room bullies
The trial of Tasha Roux day two – the jury
Roger Fish’s opening speech
The witnesses for the Crown
Dinner with Kelly Backworth
Tasha gives her evidence
Charlie’s speech
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
Disclaimer
This book is dedicated to the Judges, barristers, solicitors, court staff, clients and criminals who have inspired the stories. All names and events have been changed, but each story and event has its genesis in some case or incident that has actually happened.
Brian Fordyke
The buzzer. The buzzer of doom. The buzzer that indicates that the jury have reached a verdict and are now ready to come back into the courtroom to deliver it. Guilty or not guilty, that’s what the buzzer means. And as soon as I hear it, the pace of my heart starts to quicken and I feel the prickle of sweat forming under my wig.
I look behind me to the dock where my client, a pockmarked and serially dishonest rogue and drug addict by the name of Brian Fordyke, sits, charged with shoplifting. The trial has not gone particularly well for him.
I’m in court sixteen of the City Crown Court. It’s a court where odd things happen, far away from the gaze of the media and the high-profile cases. It is tucked away, ancient, dusty and largely ignored. It is where I ply my trade as a barrister. In court sixteen the buzzer is followed by the footsteps – heavy, foreboding footsteps on the wooden floor that leads from the jury room to the courtroom: clomp, clomp, clomp.
And with every footstep, the verdict ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’, happiness or sadness, freedom or incarceration is brought a clomping step nearer.
The door from the jury room to the courtroom opens and in they walk. The usual vengeful suspects: my jury, Brian Fordyke’s jury. There’s the little old lady who has sucked Everton Mints religiously throughout the trial; the bloke with the tattoos who sat and stared utterly oblivious to my attempts to persuade him of Brian Fordyke’s innocence; the middle-class man who has worn a suit throughout; the hippy lady in the flowing blouse who chose to affirm rather than swear on the Bible (always nice to get a couple of liberals on the jury); and the pretty girl to whom I found myself paying far too much attention during my closing speech. These and the seven others clomp towards their place in the jury box and sit down.
At this point I watch them carefully. I know that if they look towards me or the dock then they will acquit my client, if they don’t, it’s curtains.
They look straight ahead, steely-faced. There isn’t so much as a glimpse in my direction or towards the dock. This isn’t good.
The foreman is the man with tattoos – for a second I try to persuade myself that this might be a good thing, that the man with the tattoos might have a bit of a colourful history himself, but I know I’m grasping at greasy straws. I know what is about to happen only too well.
The Clerk of the Court gets up and clears her throat: ‘Will the foreman of the jury please stand.’ Tattoo man gets up.
‘Have the jury reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed?’
‘Yes.’ His voice is deep and gravelly without a hint of reasonable doubt.
‘Do you find the defendant, Brian Fordyke, guilty or not guilty of the theft of a marital aid from Mr Nookies Adult Emporium?’
‘Guilty.’
Damn.
‘And that is the verdict of you all?’
‘It is.’
I hear my client let out a little sigh from the dock as the Judge replaces his glasses and looks disapprovingly at me. Why is he looking at me? I didn’t steal the bloody marital aid; and why do we have to call it a marital aid? I mean, who uses that term – no one! Why can’t we just say dildo?
‘Mr Russell Winnock,’ says the Ju
dge.
I rise obediently to my feet. ‘Your Honour?’ I reply.
‘Your client has been found guilty on the most overwhelming of evidence.’
‘Well … Yes.’ I try to put up some kind of counter proposition to this, but the Judge, a ruthless and often confused old codger by the name of Marmaduke, is having none of it.
‘In fact, Mr Winnock, this case shouldn’t have even been in my court.’
‘Well, Your Honour …’ I’m stumbling now, looking for words, but nothing except air leaves my mouth.
‘This is the type of case that should have been heard by …’ he pauses ‘… the Magistrates.’ His Honour, Judge Marmaduke, spits out the words ‘the Magistrates’ as though he were talking about a group of lepers.
‘Who advised this man –’ he points in the direction of the now guilty Brian Fordyke as he shouts at me – ‘to elect to come to the Crown Court rather than,’ another pause, ‘the Magistrates?’
‘Er, me, Your Honour. That was me.’
‘You, Winnock!’
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
‘Why the devil did you do that? You’ve wasted thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money.’
‘Well, Your Honour, I believe that all men and women should have the chance to be tried by their peers.’
‘Well, your client was tried by his peers.’
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
‘And they convicted him.’
‘They did, Your Honour.’
‘Of the theft of this, this …’ he is gesticulating wildly, his eyes bulging. Finally, without finishing his sentence, and with his face a coronary shade of incensed purple, he turns to my client. ‘Brian Fordyke, stand – you will go to prison for fifteen years.’
There is a gasp from around the courtroom – even the jury gasp. I jump up to my feet: ‘Your Honour, fifteen years? The dildo was only worth eight quid.’
‘Alright then, fifteen weeks,’ spits Marmaduke, and with that he flounces out of the court.
The jury look at me, I look at them and the little old lady turns to the woman next to her and says in a loud stage whisper – ‘God love him.’
I sigh, it wasn’t meant to be like this, my life as a criminal barrister. I had imagined it so very differently. I had imagined that I would be revered in court, loved by clients and solicitors, respected by Judges and opponents. I had imagined a life of serious, headline-worthy cases, trials at the Old Bailey, interviews with Joshua Rosenberg, where I would effortlessly say things like, ‘Joshua, no, bless you, your interpretation of the meaning of the decision in the case of Galbraith is quite wrong, let me help you out.’ And then there’s the money, I had always imagined that being a barrister would lend itself to having a few quid. I had imagined having a fast red sports car, a penthouse flat and an extensive fine wine collection. I imagined having handmade suits, a little place in France and a posh girlfriend who looked good in jodhpurs.
In short, when I decided to study law at Leeds University, some thirteen years ago, I imagined that I would become successful, powerful, rich, highly sexed and, yes, probably a bit of a tosser. Sadly, having been a barrister for nine years and having just turned 31, only one of those ambitions has come to fruition – and it isn’t the sex bit.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t enjoy being a barrister – I truly love my job (well, most of it) and there are parts of the job that I would never want to give up. I still see it as a privilege, I still see it as performing an important function; I quite like my clients, even the pervs and weirdos; I enjoy the cut and thrust of a trial and I even like the old-fashioned ways, the pomp and ceremony, wigs and gowns and bowing, and the peculiar language that is unique to courts. I like all that, but, in truth, being a criminal barrister today, after all the cuts and the changes and closures, is a bit like arriving at a party at the point when everyone is already getting into a taxi or passed out on the couch – fun’s been had, but I ain’t getting any of it.
This book is about all of it – the fun and the pomp, the seriousness and the stress. It is about the weirdos and Judges and clients, the opponents you respect and the opponents you despise. It is about, I hope, my attempts to do my best and let you into a few little secrets along the way. It is about being a barrister.
How do you defend someone who you know is guilty?
As a criminal barrister, the first question I get asked when people find out what I do for a living is ‘How do you defend someone who you know is guilty?’ It’s probably the first question you thought of when you picked up this book. Well, I’ll tell you.
After Brian Fordyke’s trial, I went down to see him – it’s what you do. He was sat alone in his cell. It was small and grey, with nothing in it but a table and two chairs – it is the place a person is put before a big part of their life is taken from them – their freedom – and it’s every bit as soulless as you would imagine. On the table someone had scratched the words, ‘Marmaduke is a Cock-Knocker’ – which seemed entirely apposite. I sat down opposite my rather forlorn and puzzled-looking client; thankfully, I didn’t detect any bitterness being directed towards me – which was something at least. I considered cracking a little joke – maybe, suggesting that on the occasion of him being convicted of his fiftieth offence of shoplifting, the police and courts might commemorate the occasion and have a whip round and present him with a small engraved tankard to mark the occasion – but I thought better of it.
That is the worst part of the job: when someone has put their faith in you, entrusted you to maintain their liberty, defend their name, and you lose. Because you both lose – but the only difference is, you’ll be going home tonight.
‘Well, Brian,’ I said, trying to muster up a bit of a smile, ‘for a second there I thought the Judge had gone mad. Fifteen years, pfft.’
He smiled weakly at me. ‘Do you know, Russ, on this occasion, I actually wasn’t guilty.’
‘I know, mate.’ I added, ‘But, the CCTV wasn’t very good for us, was it?’
He shrugged in acknowledgement of the utterly damning Close Circuit Television footage that showed him in HD quality fiddling with his flies, before placing the offending marital aid down his trousers and making to leave the shop.
‘And, I suppose, if you put yourself in the jury’s position,’ I continued, ‘they were never going to believe that you were simply attempting to compare the, er, marital aid, to your own tackle.’
He shrugged again and it hit me that actually, if I had been a juror I would probably have convicted him as well.
But that isn’t my job, I am not there to decide if someone is guilty or innocent. That is why the question ‘How do you defend someone who you know is guilty?’ – which every barrister is asked by everyone they ever speak to at every dinner party or family gathering they ever attend – is so perplexing. We don’t know if the person is guilty or not, we only do what our clients tell us. And if they tell us that they were sticking a dildo down their trousers because they were buying a saucy present for the Mrs and wanted to compare the present to their own appendage to ensure that they didn’t get anything too big, then that’s the defence which we will place before a jury, even if it’s probably a load of cobblers. Because all of us, whether we like it or not, are innocent until proven guilty. So it’s not a dilemma at all, it’s very simple – if someone tells us that they are not guilty, even after we’ve told them that the evidence is strong, even after we have told them that they will be making things far worse for themselves if they have a trial, then we have to take them at their word, our own feelings and opinions are irrelevant. We put forward the points as best we can, and let others decide about guilt or innocence, right or wrong. That is our job.
I shook hands with Brian Fordyke. He’d been to prison before, for him fifteen weeks offered no fear and no surprises. He would come out after about six weeks, his craving for whatever drug he had been using would probably return, his desire to go straight probably forgotten, and before long, he�
��d be back in court, waiting for the buzzer and the jury’s verdict. And then, because it would almost certainly be ‘guilty’, he would be back in prison for another couple of months. That was his life.
And me, well, I limped back to chambers to prepare myself for the next brief, the next case – in the hope that, perhaps, it would be more exciting, more successful and more lucrative than the last one. Perhaps it would be the case that would make my name.
Chambers
I’m not proud of this, but by the time I get back to my chambers, Gray’s Buildings, after a trial, I’ve usually forgotten about my client. I know that sounds callous and cold, but the brain of a barrister has a habit of jettisoning things quite quickly – it has to, otherwise we’d end up demented, our every thought haunted by the ghosts of cases long gone. Yes, okay, there are occasions when you wake up in the middle of the night, sit bolt upright and think – ‘Why didn’t I just ask that question?’ or, actually, more likely, ‘Why did I have to ask that one last stupid question?’ But usually we go to court, we do our cases, we come back from court, and somewhere in between leaving court and arriving at our next destination, the gruesome details of the last client become lost in the canopy of our minds.
Confessions of a Lawyer Page 1
