I needed counsel to conduct the trial at the High Court. I asked my brother, James, also a criminal lawyer, for his thoughts and he recommended a junior counsel by the name of Paul McBride, newly called to the Bar and whom he described as ‘a fighter’. Paul turned out to be more than merely a fighter, he was a brilliant lawyer who had graduated in law age nineteen and went on to be Scotland’s youngest ever QC at age thirty-six. Young Paul had one look at the stinker of a brief and thought it might be in order for me to seek sanction from the Legal Aid Board to instruct senior counsel. That request was refused. Some things never change.
So, on the first day of the trial, we were walking towards Court 9 in Parliament House, Paul on one side of the client, myself on the other, like two corner men leading their out-of-shape amateur boxer towards a confrontation with the defending World Champion. On the journey, I happened to mention to the client that it was good to see his wife was standing by him, as it had been a constant feature during my preparations how adamant she was that her husband was innocent. Paul then asked how sexual relations between the client and his wife were, possibly in case it was suggested that there had been some sort of sexual frustration behind the alleged attack. Unlike today, back in the Eighties, there were no holds barred when it came to asking witnesses questions to do with their sex life.
‘Great,’ was my client’s response. ‘If anything they’ve improved since my vasectomy.’
At this point you have to imagine solicitor and counsel screeching to a halt, while the accused marches on down the corridor, oblivious to the import of his remarks.
Needless to say, the trial did not proceed. I was dispatched to the University of Edinburgh’s Medical School to return with Professor Anthony Busuttil, Emeritus Professor in Forensic Medicine, while the accused’s wife was sent home to bring back her husband’s vasectomy certificate from the hospital. There then followed a great deal of discussion, a deposit was made into a small jar for a man with a large microscope and, after a very long day, the case was deserted.
No action was ever taken against the complainer. She’d been at a party. Her boyfriend was working away from home at the time and she’d had too much to drink to the extent that she’d been sick into a carrier bag. Whoever’s sperm had been donated it wasn’t my client’s. Why she’d picked on my client, I never found out. Maybe she’d been drunk and confused. Perhaps she’d had some kind of drunken nightmare. Those would be the charitable views to take. A less charitable view would be that in the days before the ‘morning-after’ pill she’d had unprotected sex at the party, thought she might be pregnant and rather than tell her boyfriend that she’d had sex with one of his pals, decided to accuse my client of rape. Who knows? Only one person.
Just as in Present Tense, my client’s subsequent acquittal did not prevent a mysterious person(s) putting his windows in with a selection of half-bricks later that night, and, no, I never got a thank you. However, neither did my client criticise me for not establishing the fact of his vasectomy at an earlier stage. I think I would have felt aggrieved if he had, for he was not a stupid man. He held an important job in the local community and we had gone over the forensic report and talked about the presence of sperm and associated blood groups on numerous occasions in the lead-up to the trial. Perhaps sex education back in the day wasn’t what it is now, but if nothing else, one would have thought if he was going to let a doctor come near his delicate areas with a scalpel in hand, he might have wanted to know the reason why.
One man, though, never let me forget. Over the years, until his untimely death in 2012, I would often come across Paul McBride at the High Court and whenever he saw me, whether I was instructing him or not, and whether the case I was involved in was rape, murder, robbery, whatever, he could never resist a dig and would shout across the room at me, ‘Have you checked to see if your client has had the snip?’
Ever since it has been the first question I ask of any rape-accused.
WHS McIntyre.
If you enjoyed this book by Sandstone Press you may also enjoy
A Fine House in Trinity by Lesley Kelly
Once a Crooked Man by David McCallum
Babylon Berlin by Volker Kutscher
Ordeal by Jorn Lier Horst
Present Tense Page 29
