The Natural History of Crime by Patricia Wiltshire

Author:Patricia Wiltshire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Blake

To me, there was a high likelihood that:

• The car had been driven down, and parked in, Common Drove.

• Huntley had been to the site at least twice.

• The petrol cans had been placed on the vegetation above the ditch.

• At some point, Huntley’s footwear had been in contact with the rear footwell mat on each side of the car.

Now I had to explain all this to the prosecuting barristers, Mr Richard Latham QC and Mr Karim Khalil, who became a QC at the time of the Soham murder case. It is the junior barrister who seems to do the hard work in providing information for the senior QC (now KC, of course) to present in court. I remember Mr Latham as a very pleasant and erudite person, but most of my dealings were with Karim. He was meticulous in appearance and demeanour, had a razor-sharp mind, and quickly grasped how complex palynological findings could be. He has certainly had an impressive career since those days I sat with him in chambers, and he became a recorder34 in the Old Bailey in 2013, as well as Deputy Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire. He was very quick to learn, and he was a very easy person to work with, but I was bemused by the long and complicated coloured charts he constructed to represent the various pollen groups and exhibits and various samples. I am so familiar with looking at the patterning of the actual figures that I do not need this approach, but I could see that the jury might be helped by his coloured pictures.

One thing is for sure: the massively costly and intricate sequence of actions and events leading up to a trial should be utterly fair and patent; but I wonder if they always are. After the experiences I have had in trials all over the country, I have sometimes been deeply impressed, but also at times disgusted. I have experienced excellent court procedures with impressive judges and barristers. Although rarely commented upon, I have also seen obvious bias in some judges and been shocked at their lack of impartiality. I have seen how trials can be curtailed or extended according to the whim of the judge, how barristers try to wear down witnesses with ridiculous questioning, much of which can be utterly irrelevant; and I have been witness to miscarriages of justice.

As in all areas of life, the efficiency and competence of the whole is only as good as its individual parts, their interaction and organisation. The UK legal justice system is supposed to be the best in the world, but it certainly isn’t perfect. I have appeared in court in Europe too where, instead of being adversarial, the courts have an inquisitorial system. I was certainly worried about some of what I experienced there too, so one can only assume that it is better to stay on the right side of the law.

As soon as my final reports had been received by Messrs Latham and Khalil, the CPS was obliged to disclose them to the defence lawyers.

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