The Justice Game by Geoffrey Robertson

Author:Geoffrey Robertson [Geoffrey Robertson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1999-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

This was an astonishing theory. Quite apart from the fact that it told the jury to ignore uncontested scientific evidence, it posited:

1) incredible behaviour by Otten on the balcony – rushing to wave at a car in the street while in the middle of intercourse; 2) incredible behaviour on the part of Helen, in clinging to a man going over a balcony to his death; and 3) a fall which she had not, on the bruise patterns, sustained. The coroner’s theory offered no explanation at all of the blow on the head which was the direct cause of her death, and it painted a cartoon picture of the German divers, fiddling with the lights of their car without hearing a mighty crash as the plummeting Otten slammed into the spikes, or looking up (every witness said the street was very well lit) to see his legs reverberating. The early-morning prayer-goer, passing this grisly and malodorous sight, who souvenired the trousers and did not report the body, seemed an extra out of Aladdin.

As the summing-up finished, Stephen Sedley rose, silently and sinuously, before Gill could stop him. ‘I have a duty to point out one or two matters . . .’ This was treason to the coroner’s faith, that any advocate might contradict him in the presence of his jury. The coroner’s rules, Gill interjected, forbade lawyers from raising any questions of fact in the hearing of the jury. Stephen was tough when he had to be, and very fast on the draw: those rules concerned matters of fact, and he had a point of law. ‘I ask you to give a proper direction, to tell the jury not to disregard the uncontested expert evidence merely because you do not like what that expert evidence says.’ The coroner began to defend his direction, giving Stephen the cue to point out in front of the jury that the evidence did not indicate that Helen Smith had been carried into mid-air by a man more concerned about his lift home than with finishing either his sexual activity or his life.

The jury was out for seven hours: time enough to wonder about all the evidence that had not been heard or seen. There had in fact been two cameras at the party: Helen’s (which was curiously empty of film) and one belonging to a German diver, who had taken pictures which had not come out. The shutter of my own mind’s eye clicked again on some grainy images: a brawl on the balcony; slaps and scratches to the face of the nurse; a push, perhaps a shove, intended only to sober a man up or make him go home, but causing him to lose his balance and stumble backwards and over the balcony rail. People running down the stairs to see what can be done. The lift is broken and the lights in the stairwell do not work, the nurse slips and falls head-first, receiving the blow which causes unconsciousness and a haemorrhaging of blood into her brain.

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