All barristers hate domestic violence cases.
Take the case of Carl Stafford. Apart from anything, it is memorable to me as it is one of the handful of cases in which I’ve been against my mate, Johnny Richardson.
Johnny was on the side of righteousness as the prosecutor, and me, well, I was representing Carl Stafford, a total bastard who would help to crystallise the image I have in my head of those who are accused of violence against their partners.
Carl was in his forties when I met him. He was a warehouse supervisor, overweight, and drunk most nights on supermarket lager.
His wife was Leanne.
Before the trial, Johnny had described Leanne to me: she was small, quiet, and had once been very pretty. The type of girl who had the best figure in the whole school, but now just looked defeated, controlled, scared and tired – tired of being scared, I suppose.
Carl Stafford was neither scared nor controlled; he was loud and abrasive, the type of guy who insisted on being the centre of attention wherever he went. People knew him, but few knew him well. He wasn’t the type of bloke who went out with mates to the pub or to the football, he went to functions, he went to parties and gatherings. There seemed to be a lot of christenings and social events in the upstairs rooms of pubs, which Carl would insist on attending with Leanne. He would place her with the benign female friends he wasn’t threatened by, whilst he took his place by the bar giving everyone who had the misfortune of being anywhere near him the benefit of his opinion on whatever was being discussed. He would try to dominate everything and everybody.
I have no doubt that his opinions were odious.
At the end of these nights, he and Leanne would get a taxi home, and this is where the problems would start. This is when Carl’s inadequacies would race round his head chased by lager and self-loathing. He would remember the conversations he’d had, the reactions of his audience. Of how Mike, his sister’s bloke, hadn’t responded properly when he was giving some kind of anecdote; or how Brian, who worked with him, hadn’t laughed at a joke, and then he would remember that there had been a man wearing a denim jacket stood at the bar who may have been looking at Leanne. Fucking Leanne, she was the source of his problems, she was laughing at him too. She was laughing at him and flirting with the bloke in the denim jacket, he bloody well knew this, and his concerns about Mike and Brian and all the other men he was threatened by would dissipate and be replaced by his rage towards his wife, who had done nothing wrong.
And that is when he would beat her.
And beat her.
And beat her.
The police had been called a few times, but Leanne had never pressed charges; she had always believed him when he said that he would change, when he told her that he loved her, when he told her that without him she would be nothing.
After a works quiz night at the Swallow’s Arms, he meted out a particularly savage beating. Leanne had run out of her house wearing only her underwear and had been helped by a neighbour who had tended to the cut under her eye and the bruises to her body, and telephoned the police.
PC Simeonson had been outstanding. She had taken Leanne to her mother’s and had carefully written down a statement in which Leanne Stafford had outlined everything that had happened to her over fourteen years. A fourteen-page statement as vicious and as desperate as any novel or gritty TV drama, except this was Leanne Stafford’s real story, her real life.
Stafford had been arrested, charged and bailed not to go anywhere near her. Predictably, because it was against every fibre of his being to relinquish control, he had breached the terms of his bail by turning up at her mum’s, pissed, and shouting an incoherent mix of how much he loved her and how she was a slag who had started it all. The police arrested him again and this time he was remanded into custody.
And that is when I met him – in a cell, as a remand prisoner.
His first words to me were ‘Why the fuck am I in here? This is a fucking disgrace. I’ve got my fucking rights.’
I told him that he was in prison because he was accused of beating his wife with a dumbbell.
‘It’s all bollocks,’ he told me.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘what about her injuries? How can you account for them?’
‘I hardly fucking touched her,’ he said, unable to meet my gaze.
The coward.
In his mind it was all her fault. In his mind she had driven him to it. I listened to him tell me about what a great dad he was, how he was missing his kids, how hard he worked for his family and how he planned to take them all to Florida next summer, and with every word, he sounded increasingly pathetic.
‘You better get me bail,’ he told me, and I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I’ll do my best, but it’s not likely, not in a case like this.’
The next week he pleaded not guilty to GBH; the Judge looked at me. ‘What is his defence, Mr Winnock?’
‘He never caused her any injury,’ I said.
‘Well who did?’ asked the Judge.
‘Not him,’ I answered. And I hated that Carl Stafford would have enjoyed the spectacle of my nonchalance in the face of the Judge’s questions.
Later, in the cells, Carl Stafford told me that she wouldn’t turn up for the trial. ‘I know for a fact,’ he said, ‘she won’t turn up.’ Guilty men know a lot of things for a fact.
I nodded and warned him that the police would bring her to court.
He was right. At the first trial, Leanne Stafford didn’t turn up.
Johnny had applied for an adjournment and the Judge had tutted. ‘Is there any prospect of this lady turning up next time?’ he asked.
And Johnny had assured him that there was. And Carl Stafford had smirked – because he knew better.
But at the next trial, Leanne did turn up.
Johnny had told me gleefully that she was in the witness care suite, reading through her statement.
I went to see Stafford.
‘Your wife is here,’ I told him.
And he looked at me, his face an ugly scowl, incredulous, disbelieving.
‘It means you have to decide if you want to run this to trial.’ I told him, ‘And if we’re having a trial you have to give me some instructions as to how she came about her injuries.’
‘I never hit her with a dumbbell,’ he said, ‘I might have slapped her, but she kept goading me.’ He paused. ‘She ripped my clothes up once,’ he said, as though this justified everything. ‘She probably did most of the injuries to herself, to make things worse.’
Now it was my turn to scowl at him.
‘You do realise,’ I said, ‘that if you have a trial, I will have to cross-examine your wife, and I will have to put it to her that she’s lying and that she caused some of her injuries herself? You understand that don’t you?’
He nodded.
And that’s what I would do, I would put my wig on my head and my cape around my shoulders and I would put my client’s case to the witness, just as I am trained to do. He was a coward and a bastard and I was an accessory. I took solace in the fact that it was a rubbish defence that was bound to fail and that Carl Stafford would end up serving even more time in prison. Should I confess this? Probably not, but it’s true, and if a barrister tells you that there has never been a time when he wanted his client to lose, then he’s probably not being truthful.
Johnny opened the case to the jury, who listened, probably grimacing inwardly at the thought of the bloated thug in the dock beating up his wife of fourteen years.
Johnny turned to the Judge. ‘I call the first witness for the Crown, Your Honour, Leanne Stafford.’
But Leanne Stafford didn’t appear through the door of the court. Instead an usher rushed in and whispered something in Johnny’s ear. I knew exactly what was happening. It was all depressingly predictable. Johnny told me later that Leanne had been left in the witness care room, shaking with fear, crying at the worthlessness of her existence, and decided that she couldn’t give evidence. She had asked to go to the toilet and run away.
The Judge wouldn’t allow Johnny another chance. ‘I’m afraid, Mr Richardson,’ he said, ‘that enough taxpayers’ money has been wasted on this already, you’ve had your chance.’
Taxpayers’ money. He couldn’t have put it in a more callous way.
Twenty minutes later Carl Stafford was released. I didn’t stick around to shake his hand. I hated him and felt no pride in securing an acquittal for my client.