I also felt a touch of embarrassment that I was standing by Jenny Catrell-Jones, who was wearing an Armani suit and carrying a Louis Vuitton handbag and had to leave after a bit to have her nails and hair done – which is hardly akin to the miners in 1984 or the Dockers strike in Liverpool. Because it is true, many of my learned friends are from privileged backgrounds and talk about lack of money and dire financial straits in a way that they have only experienced in the abstract.
Not that I begrudged us our right to protest against the cuts in our pay, not at all, because the fight to save the Criminal Bar and legal aid goes far beyond the financial needs of a few young lawyers. I mean, think about it, there you are, an honest, hardworking normal person going about your business, when one day, out of the blue, you have a knock on the door and are confronted by a policeman telling you that someone you love has committed a crime, or worse, that you have been accused of a crime – and you know you haven’t done it, or, perhaps you have done it, but it isn’t nearly as bad as it’s been made out. In those circumstances you would want someone who has a genuine and professional talent to represent you, and the reality is that if the cuts continue then many of the best and brightest will leave the criminal bar and go and do something else.
But, sadly, many in the media don’t seem to understand this, and predictably, on the day after our strike, the right-wing press had a field day, ignoring the issues that were being raised and focusing instead on the expensive handbags and suits of those who were on strike. ‘Fat Cat Barristers Man the Picket Lines,’ said one headline, whilst another asked, ‘Is This the Most Privileged Picket Line Ever?’
Eventually, as the applause for the last speaker subsided and the reluctant strikers traipsed away to prepare for the next day in court, I retired to the pub with a few of my new comrades. I felt like getting pissed and thirstily quaffed my first pint before spotting my roommate, Angus Tollman, by the bar. He was with James Conroy, an experienced old hack from another chambers. I went to join them; Conroy was already in mid rant. ‘Ten years ago no barrister worth his salt would admit to having financial difficulties, to say you were skint was the same as saying you were crap. But now, I don’t mind admitting it, I owe the Revenue a fortune, and it’s not because I can’t do my job, it’s because they don’t bother paying me. If I’m not made bankrupt this year, I’ll eat my wig.’
‘What did you think of the demonstration then?’ I asked them.
Conroy gave a weary shrug, before adding dismissively, ‘For all the good it will do us. We’re Pandas, boys, and the bamboo is fast running out. If I were your age, I’d go and do something else.’ He sighed and downed his pint, before adding sarcastically, ‘And what did those idiots from Extempar Chambers think they looked like with that massive bloody cartoon thing! I suppose it’ll get them on the telly.’
I grinned. ‘Yes, any more legal aid cuts and they’ll have to sell their espresso machine.’ I turned to Angus Tollman. ‘What about you, Angus? What did you think?’
He averted his eyes for a second, looking uncomfortable. ‘I wasn’t there.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I was shocked by this, I felt my hackles go up, I was now expecting a bit of a row. I found myself poised to tell him that he had let us all down by breaking the strike, and that it was alright for him with his wealthy background – but saving legal aid was important for those without his family’s wealth. Instead I just asked him why, as abrasively as I could.
‘Well,’ he answered, ‘I’ve been defending in a sexual assault trial this week.’
I nodded, I’d heard him talk about it.
‘We asked the Judge if the court wouldn’t sit today to allow us to join the action, but she wouldn’t let us. She said that if we didn’t turn up, she would be …’ he paused and did the air quotes gesture with his fingers, ‘… “disappointed”.’
‘Which Judge?’ I asked.
‘Palfryman,’ he said, which surprised me, Her Honour Judge Palfryman always gave the impression of being as helpful as she could to the Bar. ‘We were halfway through the evidence of a young kid, you see,’ he continued, ‘there was no way that the court wouldn’t sit, we couldn’t make the kid wait another two days before finishing his evidence. I can understand that, the kid was only nine years old.’
I understood too. The Judge was right. Angus was right. I wouldn’t be taking him to task, he would be spared my revolutionary zeal. He had done what all of us would have done – no case involving a child giving evidence about a sexual assault could be adjourned, and no decent barrister would have allowed that to happen. I just wished that the Daily-bloody-Mail and all the others who called us fat cats and accused us of being out to save our own pay packets could understand this.
Football, violence, and the case of Archie Finch
I arrived at City Crown Court to represent Archie Finch in a matter of violent disorder full of confidence. In case you’re wondering, Archie Finch isn’t his real name, he’s the son of a footballer, obviously not called Finch, who played for Arsenal and Chelsea about thirty years ago.
The thing about Archie was that, although just like his dad he adored the beautiful game, he was more interested in the dark side of football: the violence, and everything that went with it – the careful organisation that would see the meeting of two rival gangs, the culture, the camaraderie, the fashion, the pursuit of the weak, the flight from helmeted police on horseback, counting the casualties and reliving it all down the pub afterwards.
Archie had been at it for years. He was an elder statesman in one of the long-established Chelsea crews – organised football hooliganism at its most brutal.
He and about 50 of his mates had ambushed a load of lads from Birmingham, but unfortunately for them, the police had prior knowledge of it and had pursued the Chelsea boys down a dead end and arrested Archie and a few others.
And now, here he was in the Crown Court on charges of violent disorder.
I swung into the robing room with the instructions to represent him clutched firmly in my fist. This was great: a multi-handed case with other barristers with a collegiate atmosphere replacing the usual feeling of being on your own, having to make decisions yourself and taking all the stress on your own shoulders. Jenny Catrell-Jones was for one of the other defendants. She was already haranguing the poor prosecutor, a CPS in-house lawyer called Adam Sinclair, who faced the dreadful prospect of having to fend off a pack of six barristers. For him, it would be the same loneliness and stress, but worse because he was outnumbered by those of us on the defence side.
‘No,’ he said, trying to avert himself from Jenny’s steeliest glare, ‘I’m not prepared to let you out of it.’
‘Why?’ said Jenny. ‘My client is a man of impeccable character – he’s the manager of a clothes shop on Oxford Street, have a heart will you, Adam, for god’s sake.’
‘No,’ repeated Adam.
‘Well where’s the evidence?’ continued Jenny.
‘Jenny, it’s all on CCTV.’
‘The quality is rubbish.’
‘The quality is brilliant.’
Jenny scowled as she turned towards me. ‘Bloody CCTV. It’s the bane of our lives. You know, Russell, there was a time when a case like this would be a joy – loads of pissed-up witnesses all saying something different, there would be three-week trials, loads of pages, and a nice fat cheque at the end of it all – now, it’s all captured on CC-bloody-TV. I mean you can’t do anything in public these days without it being captured in High Definition – how’s anyone supposed to plead not guilty to anything?’
She paused. ‘Anyway, who are you for?’
‘Archie Finch,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘they gave you Finchey did they? Good luck.’
I wasn’t sure what she meant by this – but I was soon to find out.
I met Archie Finch in the foyer. He was a heavily set man, muscular and with an air of menace. He had tattoos up one arm professing his love for Chelsea FC and someone called Keeley
. He had small eyes and looked as though he would be ready for an argument at the drop of a hat.
I led him to a small conference room, and gave him my usual cheery speech about it being his case and me doing anything he instructed. He sat there calmly, displaying no emotion whatsoever. Then I told him about the CCTV. ‘I’ve watched it, and I have to say, it doesn’t look good, Mr Finch. At one point you are seen throwing a police dog at a horse.’
He nodded, then his body language changed and he leaned towards me. ‘This is what’s going to happen, Mr Winnock,’ he said politely, but somewhat menacingly. ‘You’re going to go to the prosecutor and tell him that all the boys will plead guilty to an affray.’
‘I’m not sure I can do that, Mr Finch,’ I said, ‘I can only speak for you.’
He nodded again. ‘I understand that,’ he said, ‘but, you can tell their barristers that is what will happen and the rest of the lads will fall into line.’
‘Okay. But what makes you think that the prosecutor will accept a plea to the lesser charge?’
‘Come on, Mr Winnock,’ said Finch, ‘you know better than that. What prosecutor would go through the hassle of having a trial on a violent disorder when there’s a plea to affray on offer?’
I was now being completely dominated by my client. He was telling me things, rather than the other way round – this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
‘But you’ll still probably get a prison sentence, even for an affray,’ I ventured, trying to reclaim some semblance of control.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but we both know that sentence is going to be in months, not the years I’d get for a violent disorder.’
He was right.
He was in control.
‘Just as long as I don’t get a banning order,’ he added.
‘I’m afraid that’s inevitable,’ I said.
‘No,’ he replied, ‘it’s not.’
‘I think it is,’ I suggested, rather meekly.
Finch was forceful, yet polite, as he recited, chapter and verse, the correct section of the Football Spectators Act that meant, in law, a Judge didn’t have to give him a banning order which would prevent him from attending football matches upon his release.
His small eyes bored into me. He had fought on terraces in the 1980s, he had caused mayhem abroad in various tournaments, he was fearless, completely mad, and knew a great deal more than I did about the law in relation to football banning orders. I was quite petrified of him.
‘I’ll check that,’ I said nervously.
‘No need, Mr Winnock – I’m right.’
He was right, of course he was right – and I felt pretty stupid.
As he predicted, the prosecutor happily accepted the affray and he and his five co-defendants all duly pleaded guilty. And as he predicted, the Judge reluctantly accepted that he couldn’t ban them from football stadia, so instead he gave them twelve months imprisonment.
Finch smiled as he went down; he knew he’d be out in less than six months, ready to get back to doing the thing he loved most – fighting.
I left court chastened. I didn’t feel particularly learned, I had met my match.
The unwilling criminal
Archie Finch knew exactly what he was doing; he knew that he was going to commit a crime the moment he sent out a message to a few of his closest and most trusted lieutenants telling them that the firm from Aston Villa would be waiting on some disused land off the Talgarth Road. He knew when he ran towards them, shouting ‘We are Chelsea, super Chelsea,’ with a stick in his hand, before going on to pick up a police Alsatian and attempt to throw it at a police horse, that he was committing a crime. He knew it, he craved it, and he took the decision of his own free will. He was now starting his prison sentence and he could have no complaints.
There are many like him, those who make that decision to burgle a house or download indecent images or sell drugs, people who know from the moment that they form that intention to carry out that particular act that they are in danger of going to prison – because they know that society doesn’t actually tolerate what they’re about to do.
Peter Drake on the other hand hadn’t meant to commit any crime. Peter Drake was a vet. A man of 62 years with an unblemished record of good works and good behaviour. He had never been in trouble in his life, he meant no harm to anyone.
One evening in October a couple of years ago, Peter Drake went for a pint in his local, The Grasshopper. It wasn’t something he did very often, but that evening, he nipped in to meet his practice partner, Graham Laugherty. Graham was late, so Peter Drake had a pint of bitter. Then, when Graham arrived, he bought him a second pint of bitter. They talked for about fifty minutes, during which time, Peter Drake, being a nice kind of fellow, bought Graham a pint back.
And one for himself.
And it was that one for himself that took him over the legal limit for driving. That one last pint as they discussed the possibility of changing the brands of a certain drug that they stocked for worming cats; that last pint as they watched the quiet pub ease into the evening. One more wouldn’t do any harm. When they’d finished it, Graham offered to get another round in, and Peter Drake put his hand over the top of his glass and said, ‘No thanks, I’d better not, I’m driving.’
He said that because he didn’t want to be a criminal, but he became one the moment he sat down behind the wheel of his car and started the engine. Peter Drake thought he’d be fine, it was, after all, only two miles to his home and he’d only had a couple – well, three – pints, but still, what could go wrong?
He drove through the centre of his village. He drove towards the zebra crossing, a crossing that he had stopped at thousands of times. And just before he did, he leant over to get his mobile phone, which had slipped into the footwell of his passenger seat, and he started to send his wife a text message telling her to put the tea on.
And in that second, over the limit and distracted by the act of sending a text message to his wife to tell her he was on his way home, he drove his car into Miss Julie-Anne Botham and her baby daughter Charlotte and killed them both.
He had meant no harm. He had not intended to break the law. He hadn’t meant to cause immeasurable and everlasting suffering to the Botham family. He had simply had one pint too many and texted his wife.
I received the papers in the case of The Crown v Peter Drake and cringed. Cases involving Death by Dangerous Driving are always awful – it is difficult to find justice in these cases, no one involved has set out to harm anyone else when they wake up that day. Peter Drake had broken the law by his own stupidity not by his intent. But, saying that, the young woman and her baby had not deserved to die. There would be no winners here.
I met Harry Ashton, the old Met copper and solicitor’s outdoor clerk in the robing room at suburbs Crown Court.
‘Is he here, Harry?’ I asked, and he told me that Peter Drake had been here since they opened the doors an hour ago.
‘Bad business this, isn’t it?’ I said.
And Harry shook his head. ‘No sympathy,’ he said emphatically.
‘Really?’ I enquired. ‘Come on, we’ve all chanced our arm after a couple of pints, he was barely over the limit.’
‘It’s not that,’ said Harry, ‘three pints and most people drive even better, it’s the texting. Any tosser who texts whilst driving and kills a young mum and a baby deserves everything they get.’
We went downstairs to the foyer to meet Peter Drake. He was sat on his own, lonely and nervous, totally out of place amongst the druggies and the wife-beaters, the fraudsters and the wastrels.
‘You’re going to have to plead guilty,’ I told him. ‘The police have looked at your phone and found the text that you sent to your wife seconds before the collision.’
He nodded, quietly sighed then asked, ‘Will I be sentenced today?’
‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘the Probation Service have written your report, so the Judge will want to sentence you immediately.’
&
nbsp; He nodded at me with thin lips and sad eyes.
‘I’ve packed a bag,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know what to bring.’
I looked at the small tweed holdall he had in his hand. The type of thing a middle-aged, middle-class man would take on a golfing weekend away or a business trip. I imagined its contents – a matching zip-up wash bag, neatly folded pyjamas and a nice shaving kit.
‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ I said.
The court was packed. The family and friends of the deceased had all turned up, they always do in cases like this – I don’t know if it’s part of the grieving process or what, but for some reason, there is a desire amongst those close to a deceased person to see the final reckoning of the person who was at the wheel.
Some of them were wearing pink T-shirts with a picture of the dead little girl and her dead mother, to show their solidarity. Peter Drake walked head down into the dock. There were a few murmurings of hissed hate projected towards him. He sat alone, utterly guilty, utterly shamed and utterly scared.
I knew the next forty minutes were going to be difficult. I knew that nothing I said would have any bearing upon the inevitable sentence that was awaiting Peter Drake; I also knew that if I wasn’t careful, I could incur the hatred of the pink-T-shirt-wearing family of the two innocent people who had died as a result of my client’s folly. They hate him, and I’m the bastard who is representing him, I’m the one who they can project their hatred towards. How can you represent a monster like that? That is the question they all want to ask of me.
The Judge came in – Judge Percy, you remember him – he’s a nice Judge, perfect for a case like this. I knew that Judge Percy would ensure that everyone was treated fairly, I knew that he would resist the temptation to treat Peter Drake like the murderer the people in pink thought he was.
The prosecutor, Raj Hasan, told the Judge the awful facts, and they were awful – Peter Drake’s Volvo was doing about 35 miles per hour when it hit the mum and the pram, knocking the seven-month-old baby fifteen feet into the air. The mother then died of internal bleeding, her last words were to ask about her little girl.
Confessions of a Lawyer Page 13
