a museum piece. To make matters still worse, the defendant had said on his arrest, “My friend was going to drive”; and the Police had allowed his friend to drive, so they could hardly say that the friend was unfit. On paper the defence was cast iron. I prepared the case in the ordinary way, and then began to think of a plan. It had to be a simple plan, because no complicated plan ever works; but it had to be sufficiently subtle that the defendant did not see it until he had fallen into it. After four to five hours thought it seemed to me that the crucial moment was when the ignition keys were handed over, and I decided to concentrate on that. I cross-examined the defendant so as to make it easy for him to say, and he did say of his own free will, “I felt like death, I was lying on a sofa at this party hardly able to stand, there was not the remotest chance of my driving, and I asked my friend to take the keys”. I cross-examined the friend so as to make it easy for him to say, and he did say of his own free will, “My friend was the life and soul of the party, I would not have known there was anything wrong, but he asked me to take the keys, so of course I did”. I remember the smiles spreading across the faces of the jury as I read out to them my scribbled notes of these two conflicting accounts. The judge summed up, without even mentioning my modest success, and asked the jury to retire. They were back in four minutes, and convicted. It is unheard of for a jury to return so soon. So what had begun as a cast iron defence, ended as a cast iron prosecution. My colleague defending asked me plaintively, “What did I do wrong?”. I did not reply; he had done nothing wrong.
In the second case two defendants were jointly charged with handling stolen goods; they both denied any involvement, but when interviewed I think had implicated each other. In a flight of imagination I decided to try to persuade each to convict the other. By the time I had cross-examined the first defendant about his movements, I was able to submit to the jury that if the first…