Never write anything down unless you are prepared to have it read out in court.
– OSCAR WILDE
The purpose of a statement is to set out formally and under oath the evidence you would be able to give if called upon at trial. This document forms the basis of your evidence and that is what’s referred to in the law as evidence in chief. When and if you are called at trial, that is the initial sworn evidence you give in response to prosecutors’ questions.
You may then be cross-examined by the defendant’s lawyer as to any inconsistencies, omissions or lies that the defence allege arise from the statement. My statement was compiled over three sessions with Paul Scarlett and I reproduce the statement in this chapter to give you a flavour of just where my thoughts were and how a statement is made and comes to be given in evidence. The statement is scanned straight into this chapter so you can read it in its entirety.
In paragraph 19 I refer to Kathleen Downes’s murder and in paragraph 20 I refer to my discussions with Dupas about similar fact evidence against him in the Halvagis case which arose from his murders of Maher and Patterson. The police said both of these comments should not be in the statement as their prejudicial value outweighted their probative value. That particular objection is commonly made in the legal process and it results in a statement being edited before it goes to the jury. I objected to having those phrases deleted because they were an integral part of my statement and if they were to be deleted then that could be done after a defence application.
The trial began and as expected defence counsel made application for those paragraphs to be deleted. That application was successful and those two pieces of evidence did not go before the jury. On this occasion those two paragraphs were removed from the statement that went to the jury. In other words, the jury never knew about that evidence.
You will note my statement is made up of three separate discussions as I have stated above. I wished the statement to properly reflect each conversation that had taken place with the police so there could be no suggestion of invention on my part. Of course, the standard allegation of fantasy was thrown at me when I gave evidence on Dupas’s trial.
When I stepped into the witness box, my statement, complete with the passages later deleted, was tendered as my evidence in chief by the Prosecutor, Colin Hillman QC.