In the Central Criminal Court

1. So there I was in the dock of the Central Criminal Court – the Old Bailey. The trial finally got under way. First every jury was settled and then the action began, the prosecution being the first to take the floor. The prosecuting council was a tall thin man, who seemed to enjoy his job. He began with a rather offhand introduction and started calling the prosecution witnesses, while Rollins, the defense counsel, who had to defend me, looked on with a bored expression on his face. I had met Rollins twice and knew he had almost no hope of winning my case. I was going to plead not guilty but there was too much evidence against me.

2. The prosecution witnesses were being sworn in one after another. They were good – very good, indeed – and I began to see why the prosecuting counsel was looking so cheerful. Expert police witnesses introduced photographs and drawings of the scene of the crime.

3. There was the motherly old lady identified me at the police station.

“I saw him strike the postman”, she testified, the light of honesty shining from her eyes. “I was standing in the corridor and saw the accused hit the postman with his fist, grab a yellow box from him and push him into an office. Then the accused ran down the stairs.”

4. The prosecutor offered her a plan of the second floor.

“Where were you standing?” he had to ask. She pointed out a place in the corridor and looked across the court straight at me. The sweet old lady was lying and she knew that I knew she was lying. She couldn’t have been standing in the corridor because I’d checked, and the details of her evidence were all wrong. There wasn’t a thing I was able to do about it, though. A hotel employee testified that the accused stayed at his hotel. He should have done it, it was true.

5. The postman gave his evidence fairly. I had hit him and he had recovered consciousness in my office. There was nothing in that which contradicted the evidence of the sweet old lady. The third eye-witness was the office boy from an office opposite mine; he said he saw me lock the office and run downstairs.

The jury drew its own conclusion.

6. There wasn’t much after that. I said my words, and the prosecutor tore me to pieces. Rollins was to save me and he really tried to do it without much success. The judge summed up. The jury was out only half an hour and the verdict was what I had expected. Then the judge asked if I had anything to say, so I spoke up with just two words: “I am innocent.”

7. After that the judge got up to pronounce the sentence.

“Joseph Aloysius Rearden, you have been found guilty of stealing by force diamonds to the value of &173000. It falls to me to sentence you for the crime. I sentence you to twenty years’ detention in such prison or prisons as the appropriate authority thinks fit.”

(after “The Freedom Trap” by D. Bagley)

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20