Felix Francis - Guilty Not Guilty

But I couldn’t tell however hard I tried by watching them walk in. Most of them just looked at the judge.

When they were all seated, the clerk of the court stood up and turned to them. ‘Would the foreman of the jury please stand.’

He did so.

‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ said the clerk. ‘Have you reached verdicts on the indictments upon which you are all agreed?

‘Yes,’ replied the foreman.

‘To my next questions,’ said the clerk, ‘only answer guilty or not guilty: on count one, theft, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’

‘Not guilty.’

NOT GUILTY!

I couldn’t believe my ears. Were the jury stupid or something? Hadn’t they been listening? How could they not find him guilty based on the evidence?

I glanced briefly at Joe in the dock and he was smiling.

I felt sick.

I could hear the blood rushing in my head and my hands were shaking. Was this all going to be for nothing?

But the court clerk moved swiftly on regardless.

‘On count two, attempted murder, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’

‘Guilty.’

I hardly heard it, such was my panic. I looked again at Joe. He wasn’t smiling now. And we weren’t finished yet.

‘On count three, murder, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’

I held my breath and my heart pounded even more. I really had no idea which way it would go.

The foreman stood bolt upright facing the judge.

‘Guilty.’

It felt to me that he had said it in slow motion, the word seemingly stretched over several seconds.

I started breathing again, letting out a small sigh of satisfaction.

But the reaction from the dock was far more dramatic.

Joe stood up and banged on the glass with his hands while shouting at the jury. ‘No. No. You’re wrong. You’re wrong. I never killed her. It was him.’ He pointed at me. ‘He killed her. It wasn’t me. He did it.’

The two security guards in the dock moved quickly to either side of Joe and they manhandled him back into his seat, where he sat in a heap.

He started crying.

The judge just watched and waited for calm to be restored. Contrary to popular belief, judges in British courts don’t have gavels to bang as they do in the United States.

‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ he said finally, facing them. ‘Thank you for your diligence in this trial and for doing your duty as citizens. You are hereby discharged.’

Then he turned to the body of the court.

‘This case is now adjourned until tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock, when sentence will be passed.’

After all that waiting, the verdicts had been over so quickly.

It felt surreal.

‘All rise,’ shouted the usher and we all did, except for Joe, who remained seated with his head down. He was then led away by the security guards, out through the door at the back of the dock.

I watched him being taken away with a mixed bag of emotions: disbelief that he had been found not guilty of the theft; pleasure that he’d at least been convicted of murder and attempted murder; anger at what he’d done to Amelia; plus a huge amount of sorrow.

And the sorrow won.

How had we come to this?

Joe and I had once been good friends, so much so that I had nearly asked him to be my best man at my wedding. And Amelia and I had both been so pleased when his and Rachael’s girls had been born, revelling in being an uncle and aunt, even if we couldn’t be parents ourselves.

And, now, all of that was gone for ever.

Amelia was dead and Joe was facing a life term in prison.

After the apparent disaster of her testimony, Rachael hadn’t returned to the court and she hadn’t been present for the verdict. But her life, too, had been destroyed. As had her children’s. They would now have no father around during their formative years, with only infrequent visits to see him in prison to look forward to.

The whole situation was a complete tragedy for all of us.

There was nothing to celebrate.

Not that that stopped DS Dowdeswell from doing so.

‘What a great result,’ he said to me, all smiles, slapping me on the back outside the court.

‘I can’t believe he was acquitted of the theft.’

‘The jury may have thought the money was a gift,’ said the DS, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘But don’t worry about that. Bradbury was convicted of the other two, and they were the big ones. You must be so pleased.’

How could I tell him that I wasn’t?

‘I suppose I’m happy it’s finally over,’ I said.

But was I?

The build-up and then the trial itself had given me a purpose in life. Now, with the delivery of the jury’s verdicts, it had suddenly finished, and in spite of mostly getting the result I wanted, I was already feeling a sense of loss.

‘I expect you’ll be reading your Victim Personal Statement to the court in the morning prior to sentencing,’ said the detective.

I shook my head. ‘I haven’t written one.’

‘Why on earth not?’

‘What good would it do?’

‘You could explain to the judge how much the attempted murder has caused you such physical pain and hardship, and also how your wife’s murder has affected your life and made it so much worse.’

It had certainly done that.

‘He’ll get a life sentence anyway,’ I said. ‘All murderers do.’

‘But the judge also has to decide the minimum term. Your statement might make a difference to the length of that.’

Did I really want that responsibility?

‘There’s still time,’ said the DS enthusiastically. ‘You can do it tonight.’

‘I suppose I could,’ I replied, but without his eagerness.

‘Great. I’ll make sure the CPS know it’s coming.’

My cheerful taxi driver dropped me outside the Old Forge.

‘Same time tomorrow?’ he said.

‘Yes, please,’ I replied. ‘But it will be the last day.’

I wasn’t sure whether he was pleased or not. For him, the trial had been a nice little earner, with guaranteed journeys to and from Oxford.

I paid his fare and went into the house. As always, it was cold and quiet, in spite of the warmth of the day.

Perhaps I should have been elated. At long last, Joe was going to get his just deserts. But it did nothing for me. The torment of loneliness continued.

When alone, I had taken to talking to Amelia.

I knew it was irrational but, nevertheless, I did it, imagining what she might have said in reply. It helped.

‘The jury found Joe guilty of your murder,’ I said out loud in the kitchen. ‘He’s going to prison for a very long time.’

I think she would have been pleased, certainly more pleased than I.

Over the past three or four years, Amelia had grown to hate her brother with a passion.

Any inter-sibling love that had once existed had been totally overridden by the pain and mental suffering he had caused to her. She had been one for whom forgiveness was something other people did, especially with respect to her brother.

‘One day I’m going to explode,’ she would often say. ‘You watch, I’ll wipe the floor with the bastard.’

I had tried my best to keep her calm, not least because anger was a serious precursor to her becoming depressed.

It had been I who had insisted that she have nothing to do with Joe, and I would plead with her not to read his emails. But I know she did, and they stoked her fury. I encouraged her to let it all wash right over her. But she couldn’t, and every one of his insults was like a dagger in her heart.

But now the court had wiped its hard blue-carpeted floor with him and, whatever the judge might say in the morning, a long stretch in the slammer awaited.

However, no length of sentence could ever bring Amelia back.