To Encourage the Others by David Yallop

Author:David Yallop [David Yallop]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: True Crime
ISBN: 9781472116604
Goodreads: 2469649
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2014-10-22T23:00:00+00:00

All that remained before the jury retired to consider its verdict, was Lord Goddard’s summing-up. John Parris was convinced that if the jury retired that afternoon, their verdict on Craig would be manslaughter, in which case Bentley could not be found guilty of murder.

Frank Cassels had made the point, when questioning the accuracy of the police evidence, that it was unlikely that the police would have been able, after the excitement of the gun fight, accurately to assemble in their minds all that had been said. ‘I do not suppose for a moment, members of the jury, that now, at twenty-five minutes to four this afternoon, you would be able to transcribe accurately the words that were used by my Lord or either of my learned friends something like, perhaps, half an hour ago.’

It was a valid point, and the Judge took it to heart, it seemed. During the lunchtime adjournment the second day, Lord Goddard’s clerk, Arthur Smith, had advised John Parris that the Judge intended to sit that day until a verdict had been returned. But now, as Frank Cassels sat down at 3.40 p.m., the Judge said:

‘Gentlemen of the jury, I never like, in so serious a case as this, to start a summing-up in the evening and then have to resume it in the morning, so we will adjourn now until tomorrow morning at 10.30.’

The gap of nineteen hours between Counsels’ speeches and the Judge’s summing-up would not have mattered if the jury had been supplied with transcripts of the trial, or even just of the final speeches, when they retired; but as has been previously noted, this facility was considered superfluous.

On Thursday, 11 December 1952, at 10.30 a.m., the members of the Court took their places for the final day of the Craig/Bentley trial.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE: Now, members of the jury, in many respects this is a very terrible case, and it is one, therefore, that it is desirable you and I should approach in as calm a frame of mind as we can.

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