Under the Wig: A Lawyer's Stories of Murder, Guilt and Innocence by William Clegg

Author:William Clegg [Clegg, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2018-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

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5 Originally a part-time judge, called a recorder, was appointed by the corporation of a city or town to ‘record’ the proceedings in their court, hence the name.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Case 8

Private Clegg

and the Joyriders

When I am defending a client it is important not to get emotionally involved with them, no matter how unfair I may think it is that they find themselves in their position. While it’s always important to understand how a defendant feels and to empathise with their predicament, becoming engrossed in their sense of injustice is likely to distract me from the legal task at hand and undermine my efforts to secure their acquittal.

I like to think I have always been able to defend my clients calmly and professionally regardless of what has been at stake for them — usually their liberty. There was one case, however, where I felt under considerable personal and political pressure to achieve the right result for the man sitting behind me in the dock.

Lee Clegg was a 21-year-old soldier on duty on the streets of Belfast when his life changed forever. In 1990, 20 years after the beginning of the Troubles, sectarian violence was still rife in Northern Ireland and the bloodshed would claim the lives of 81 people that year. Private Clegg would be convicted of one of those deaths.

On the evening of 30 September he and seven colleagues from the Parachute Regiment were manning a security checkpoint on the Upper Glen Road in Catholic west Belfast, as part of an anti-joyrider campaign mounted by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the largely Protestant police force. A stolen Vauxhall Astra was driven straight at the roadblock. Fearing they were about to be the victims of a hit and run attack or a bombing, the paratroopers opened fire on the car as it bore down upon them and crashed through the roadblock without stopping. Forty shots were fired, 19 of which hit the vehicle. The driver Martin Peake, 17, and the backseat passenger Karen Reilly, 18, were killed. Another male passenger, Markiewicz Gorman, escaped with minor injuries.

The police investigated the shootings. The law was clear. To defend themselves the soldiers were entitled to open fire when the car was being driven at them, but after it had gone through the roadblock they were no longer under threat — and the legal position changed abruptly. If the fatal bullet had been fired then, it would be outside the rules of engagement and would amount to murder.

Detectives established that Karen Reilly had been killed by a bullet from Private Clegg’s gun, but nobody could be sure exactly how she had been sitting in the backseat, nor how the fatal bullet had entered her body. Ballistic tests suggested that Private Clegg had fired at the car after it had gone through the checkpoint, when it could no longer be considered a threat. He was charged with the murder of Miss Reilly and the attempted wounding of Mr Peake.

Private Clegg’s trial took place before a Diplock court, a special type of hearing in Northern Ireland.

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