скачать книгу бесплатно
‘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 Judge.
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? (#u7407b055-1fb3-57c7-85a1-d259f451bd1e)
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 (#ulink_a8bbe70c-1206-5371-9d81-0d29a1c5131a)
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.
They’re funny things, chambers. They don’t really seem to belong to the modern age. Despite the desperate attempts of some of the big City sets to employ practice managers and IT consultants and PR gurus, they almost all still have a sniff of the eighteenth century about them, when a man could conduct a court case whilst simultaneously eating a hearty dinner and enjoying a flagon of ale before going on to enjoy the delights of Madame Pomfrey’s girls on Petticoat Lane.
Gray’s Buildings is tucked down a back street and about a ten-minute walk from the City Crown Court. It has seen better days and as a building is remarkable only for its 1970s pebble-dash and a massive oak door that is painted gallows black. Next door is a sandwich shop, across the road is the Erskine Pub and next door to that is the super-duper, ultra-modern Extempar Chambers – motto ‘We Don’t Judge, We Just Care.’ Extempar Chambers is the future, or so we are told. They have about 150 members, all of whom have a First Class degree from Cambridge or come from a long line of High Court Judges. They have fifteen clerks who all appear to be former models and a liveried van to deliver briefs to your doorstep. They have corporate days out, hunting and white-water rafting, they even have a motion sensor espresso machine (whatever that is). They have contracts with multinational companies, an interactive website and a career plan for each member.
But, surely all of that counts for nothing when you’re faced with the likes of Brian Fordyke – then, all the motion sensor espresso machines and smiley clerks in the world can’t compensate for the ability to talk and act like a normal human being.
My chambers does not have a motto. We are what is termed a medium-sized traditional chambers. There are about 60 barristers and we are all strictly self-employed sole-trading businessmen (we are not allowed to take a wage), but we band together and pay an astronomically high percentage of our fees to our chambers to employ five clerks, two typists and one extremely bubbly Scottish girl whose role no one is quite sure of.
I have a desk in a room and a pigeonhole and a shelf upon which I keep my red-ribboned briefs.
My room is on the top floor down a dark and hidden corridor next to the toilet. It is home to four of us: me; Amir Saddique, a young and extremely intelligent Personal Injury (PI) and contract lawyer; Jenny Catrell-Jones, a criminal barrister in her fifties who swears like a trucker, wears frighteningly short skirts and scares the life out of most Judges; and Angus Tollman, who is a couple of years junior to me and already has a shelf bulging with cases involving serious frauds, gruesome violence and despicable sex – bastard, he probably has a red sports car as well.
Amir rarely goes to court, his practice is what we call a paper practice, every day he sits down with a pile of briefs about people who have tripped or slipped or been in car crashes or are refusing to be bound by some contractual agreement or other. For me, I would rather sit watching grass grow than do this kind of law, but Ammie has a wonderful ability to sit quietly at his desk, which is covered in Tottenham Hotspur memorabilia, and plough methodically through them.
Even though Amir has never been in the Crown Court in his life, I know that if I am going to moan about a case or a Judge or a jury, then he will feel my pain. He knows what it’s like to lose (though I’d wager it doesn’t happen very often to him).
I have always been pleasantly surprised by my relationship with other members of chambers. True, there are one or two who are stuck so firmly up their own arses that they are virtually impossible to speak to, but, on the whole, most members of my chambers are sound. We provide a service to one another, a warm, yet slightly disengaged comradeship – offering a word of advice here, a friendly ear to moan to there, and a feeling of solidarity that is important.
The names of each member of chambers appear on a copper- plated list above the black front door. We are listed in order of call, which is the date when our Inn (an ancient organisation that no one can quite remember the purpose of – more of which, later) deems that we are fit to be a barrister.
I have long concluded that there are really two types of people who become barristers – those whose parents were barristers and judges and those of us who, when we were children, watched a TV courtroom drama, probably involving an incredibly handsome advocate or a fascinating and flawed maverick genius advocate who either managed to get himself involved in an action-packed adventure that led to him ‘solving the case’, or cross-examined someone with such supreme skill that suddenly they broke down and confessed that ‘Yes, you’re right, I did it.’ You know the ones.
Both scenarios are of course utter nonsense: no one ever breaks down and confesses to anything under cross-examination. The best you can usually hope for is that you manage to make someone look a little bit shifty, which hardly lends itself to good TV drama – ‘In tonight’s episode of Courtroom QC, rugged maverick genius Silk, Arthur Morse QC, manages to make someone look a bit shifty.’
As for action-packed adventure, the nearest a barrister gets is when they have to get the night bus home after the annual Christmas drinks do.
My parents were not Judges or lawyers, they were teachers. Why did I come to the Bar? Kavanagh QC, ITV, 9pm, Thursday nights, that’s why.
Do I regret it?
Well, the jury, as they say, is still out.
Wigs, gowns, three-piece suitsand my blue bag (#ulink_26dc691c-2bf3-5259-a056-fe10fb2192a1)
There are a few things about a barrister’s appearance that will help you understand the life of a barrister and possibly a few things that will help you understand me. First, I wear a three-piece suit. You may have noticed that a lot of male barristers wear three-piece or double-breasted suits and you may have dismissed this as a sartorial throwback to a different age or that we have the fashion sense of a politician, but actually there is more to it than that. Barristers are, strictly speaking, not allowed to wear a single-breasted suit whilst in a Crown Court. True, some do, especially since more and more solicitors have taken up work in the Crown Courts, but they risk being admonished by a Judge. Indeed, I once saw a Judge bellow at a hapless and slightly unkempt solicitor advocate, screaming at him, ‘Jones, I can see oceans of your shirt wallowing about under your robes – don’t you know anything: single breasts are banned in the Crown Courts of England and Wales.’ He then refused to hear the unfortunate advocate until he’d borrowed a waistcoat.
It could have been worse, mind, he could have been wearing the wrong type of shirt; woe betide you if you wore the wrong shirt – that would be catastrophic. All male barristers must wear a stiff court collar. And legend has it that a barrister who once appeared before the High Court wearing a ‘theatre dress shirt’ – which is completely taboo – was taken out the back by the bins and flogged to within an inch of his life. As I say, probably a legend that one, but it works because none of us would dare to break that rule.
The women don’t have it that much easier – being forced to wear a white stiff collar that looks suspiciously like a nun’s wimple.
Is there any justification for these strict rules? Not really. I suppose the powers that be would say that if the standards of dress are maintained then the standards in court will also be kept up.
It’s a bit of a pain because most shops don’t sell three-piece suits, and the ones that do, sell them for extortionately high prices. Luckily, in the last couple of years, I’ve discovered Suits‘R’Us.com of Bangkok, who, for under 200 quid, will sort you out something lovely with a brand new three-piece, just as long as you aren’t too fussy about either the quality or the fit.
The next thing to notice about me is that over my shoulder I carry a blue, drawstring canvas bag, upon which you will find my initials embroidered in gold cotton – RW: Russell Winnock. Inside the bag are my robes and wig, my kit.
Now, the blue bag is important. You’ll hear a lot about it. And, very nice you might think, but, in actual fact, the blue bag is a desperate sign of failure – because it’s blue. You see, there are two types of bags used by barristers to carry their wigs and gowns, a blue one or a red one. Now, the blue one is the one you buy (or your parents buy) when you are first called to the Bar, in that moment when you proudly don your clobber for the first time, and the outfitter tells you how lovely you look and suggests that ‘sir might be interested in a special bag to put it all in’. Next minute, you’re parting with another 200 notes for a blue bag to go with the 700 you’ve just spent on a horsehair wig and nylon cape. At first, you’re quite proud of your lovely blue bag and you confidently sling it over your shoulder. But after a while you realise that the blue bag is inferior in every way to the red bag. Now, apart from the colour, the red bag is exactly the same, except that you can’t buy a red bag, someone has to buy it for you, and that someone is a Silk – or Queen’s Counsel – the international star strikers in the world of the Bar. It’s a sign that you have been involved in a ‘big case’, a case which has involved, more often than not, someone’s death, a case which required leading Counsel, a Silk; and that the Silk was so pleased with your work as a junior that he’s decided to buy you a red bag.
It is therefore a mark of success, and still having your blue bag – the one purchased by your loving mother and father in a moment of pride – means that you are a failure because you’ve never been deemed quite good enough to have a red bag.
I still have a bloody blue bag, and the pursuit of a red one has become an all-consuming passion in my professional life.
Pupilage and Ronnie Sherman (#ulink_11356658-57b1-5dda-bd84-98e43b8046e1)
In the olden days, every chambers had a Senior Clerk. Now things are slowly changing. Extempar Chambers (you remember, ‘We Don’t Judge, We Just Care’) have something called a Director of Advocacy Services.
My chambers still has a Senior Clerk. His name is Clem Wilson – and he scares the living daylights out of me.
Most people will have seen legal dramas on TV where the stereotypical depiction of barristers’ clerks is as a ruthless former East End barrow boy blessed with the cunning of an especially cunning fox, who pit their crafty, working-class street wits against those of the lumbering toffs who pay their wages – I have to say that this is entirely realistic. The only difference between the fictional clerks of TV and my Senior Clerk is that mine isn’t a cockney, he comes from Manchester, and this, somehow, makes him seem even more ferociously scary.
Most of the junior members of chambers are petrified of him. Occasionally, there is talk of a coup to oust him, but that is only after a few pints at the Erskine, when everyone is sure that he’s nowhere to be seen.
On my first day in chambers as a pupil barrister, he called me into his room.
‘You must be Russell Winnock,’ he said.
‘Yes, Mr Wilson,’ I said, ‘that’s right.’
He then gazed up at me, in a way that a cunning fox might gaze at a particularly stupid hedgehog.
‘Now, if one year from today you are lucky enough to be taken on by chambers and become a tenant, I shall cease calling you Russell Winnock and I shall call you Mr Winnock – but not until then, you understand that?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘of course.’
‘And if you’re any good, then I shall be proud to do so. But, if you’re rubbish and you make a tit out of me or chambers, I’ll get rid of you, is that understood?’
I continued to nod.
‘Now, you are a very lucky young man, Russell Winnock, because your pupil-master is going to be Mr Sherman.’
‘Fantastic,’ I said, with the enthusiasm of a collie dog, though I hadn’t the first clue who Mr Sherman was.
‘There are two things you need to know about Mr Sherman. First, he is a genius, second, like all geniuses, he has his particular foibles.’ At this point he looked at me with a strange intensity, which I have come to realise is his way of trying to indicate that he is employing some euphemism and that he wanted to see if I understood. I didn’t. I didn’t have a clue what he was going on about.
‘Alright?’
I nodded and my Senior Clerk continued, ‘Now today, Mr Sherman is at the Bailey. I suggest you wait for him in the waiting area, he’ll be around shortly to pick you up.’
‘Thank you Mr Wilson,’ I said, ‘thank you.’
I went to leave – but before I did, Clem Wilson called out to me again, ‘And Russell,’ I turned around, ‘some words of advice. For the next twelve months, don’t even try to have a personality of your own; don’t make any friends; and don’t do anything stupid.’
‘Right,’ I said, beaming in a confused way like a half-wit, as bits of my personality flaked off there and then.
I took myself off to the waiting area and sat, patiently, until eventually my pupil-master arrived. I heard him before I saw him – his great baritone voice, oozing masculine power and confidence. He was talking to one of the clerks.
‘What pupil?’
‘Your new pupil, Mr Sherman, he’s waiting for you in the foyer.’
‘No one told me I was getting a bloody pupil. Whose idea was this?’
‘Head of Chambers, Mr Sherman, he thought it would be a good thing.’
‘Well I hope she’s got big tits and makes good coffee.’
