Bernard Knight - Grounds for Appeal

‘Here’s Number Six, but no one seems to be about,’ said Richard. ‘It’s ten to ten, so we’re in plenty of time.’

‘Let’s have a look inside,’ suggested Angela, looking very smart and businesslike in a slim charcoal-grey suit over a white blouse. They went into the cramped vestibule and looked through a window in the inner door. The three Appeal judges were not yet on their high bench, but a group of bewigged barristers, dark-suited solicitors and black-gowned ushers were standing around the front of the court.

‘There’s Douglas Bailey and Penelope Forbes,’ observed Richard, pointing at the Bristol solicitor and the junior counsel. They moved into the back of the court and very soon Bailey saw them and came hurrying across to greet them.

‘Good to see you both. We’re going to be running a little late, I’m afraid, a lot of legal wrangling to be endured.’ He looked worried and slightly abstracted as he spoke.

‘Are there problems?’ asked Richard.

‘Some procedural issues about admissibility of evidence. I hope we can get it sorted out, but I suggest you pop down to the refreshment room for half an hour, to save waiting too long in this mausoleum.’

Angela knew the way and they went back down the stairs and out through a passage at the back of the main hall, following signs to a rather spartan cafe in the bowels of the building. Richard brought a couple of cups of indifferent coffee from the counter and they sat at a Formica-covered table to spend thirty minutes in these uninspiring surroundings at the heart of the British judicial system.

‘Bailey didn’t seem all that optimistic, did he?’ said Angela, pushing aside her half-empty cup with a moue of distaste. ‘I wonder what the problem can be?’

Richard was uncharacteristically cynical. ‘Probably the lawyers spinning it out to increase their fees. They get paid piecework, so the longer it lasts, the more “refreshers” they get.’

When the half hour was up, they made their way back up to the court, to find an usher waiting for them.

‘Mr Bailey asks if you would mind waiting outside here, please. Their lordships are sitting now, hearing legal arguments.’

He directed them to a bench outside the court, on the cloistered corridor that looked down at the floor of the great hall below. Like all the woodwork, the seat looked as if it had been there since the place was built eighty years earlier.

They waited patiently for an hour, Richard eventually getting restive, as the hard oak was becoming unkind to his backside. Both of them were free from any stage fright at appearing before Lords of Appeal, as they had been too long in the business of giving expert evidence to be at all nervous, but the delay was proving irksome.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ said Richard, as he stood to walk up and down the corridor, partly to bring back the circulation into his thighs. On the second circuit, his question was answered, as Douglas Bailey and Penelope Forbes came out of the courtroom to speak to them. Both looked despondent, though the woman looked angry as well.

‘Big problem, I’m afraid,’ growled Bailey. ‘It looks as if we’ve brought you up to London for nothing!’

Richard stared at him in surprise. ‘You mean you’re not going to call us? Has there been an adjournment?’

Miss Forbes shook her head. ‘More than that, I’m sorry to say. Their Lordships, in their wisdom, have decided that they will not hear your evidence. Not today, not ever, unless we manage to get another Appeal sometime in the future!’

Angela was indignant, in her usual dignified way.

‘But that’s outrageous! This Appeal was Millie’s only hope. Why on earth have they refused to listen to us?’

Before the barrister could reply, the court door swung open and a very angry Paul Marchmont strode out. He was red in the face and his hair was dishevelled as he tore off his wig. Advancing on them, he began apologizing profusely.

‘I’m so sorry, doctors! Both for you and poor Millicent Wilson! Those silly old fools in there should be retired, before they do any more legal damage!’

Though Marchmont was known as a bit of a rebel, this was strong language even for him.

‘So what’s happened?’ asked Richard, perturbed that all his hard work seemed to have been in vain.

‘The three wise monkeys in there declared that this was an Appeal, not a retrial. Their argument, from which I could not budge them, was that your opinions could have been given at the original trial and is therefore not new evidence.’

‘But we were not involved at the trial,’ protested Angela. ‘We’d never even heard of Millie Wilson then.’

The QC threw up his hands in disgust. ‘I know, but this has happened before. The judges take such a narrow view of things and stick like glue to the rules. I tried to preach the “natural justice” sermon to them, but they were not impressed. Obviously, they had made up their minds not to hear you before we’d even started.’

‘I still don’t understand why our evidence was not good enough for them,’ persisted Angela stubbornly.

Marchmont waved his arms about in denial.

‘My dear lady, it was first class! Their blinkered argument was that as you are not putting forward any new discoveries made since last year, the same evidence could have been offered at the trial, either by you or by some other competent forensic experts. I could not deny to their lordships that all you have so diligently put forward in your excellent reports was available knowledge last year. The judges said that the fact that it was not so offered was the fault of the defence team and that was not a factor that concerned them.’

Richard was becoming as exasperated as the senior counsel.

‘So Millie will have to spend God knows how many years in prison because of some technicality seized upon by three elderly judges? Is there nothing that can be done for her?’

Marchmont mopped his brow with a flowing white handkerchief before settling his wig back on his head.

‘After their lordships have lunched, I’ll try to nit-pick a few points in the trial proceedings, but I know it will be futile. The success rate in criminal Appeals is abysmally low, as the judges’ mafia stick together and the Lords of Appeal fall over backwards not to find any fault with the way their brothers in the lower courts conduct their business.’

With more profuse apologies and commiserations — and a reassurance that all expert witness fees and expenses would be met — the lawyers left them to make their way out of the vast building. Richard was still seething with indignation at having done all that work in vain, but Angela was more concerned with their inability to have helped Millicent Wilson.

‘The poor woman will be devastated,’ she said, as they walked out into the Strand. ‘I don’t envy Douglas Bailey for having to break the news to her.’

In the open air, away from the inimical atmosphere of the courts, Richard’s mercurial temperament took an upswing.

‘Come on, let’s go and have a nice lunch somewhere, then get to Paddington and head back to civilization in Wales.’

Next morning at coffee in the staff room, they had to relate every detail of their abortive trip to Sian and Moira, who were equally incensed by the outcome.

‘They say the law’s an ass and now I quite believe them,’ said their fiery technician, her socialist hackles rising. ‘All those old judges, with their Eton and Oxford backgrounds, should be sacked and some younger ones appointed, who know what ordinary life is really like.’

Moira was more thoughtful about the debacle and got Richard to explain what had gone wrong. He repeated what the Queen’s Counsel had said to them.

‘What did he mean by “natural justice”?’ she asked, her growing interest in the law evident once again.