Well hello. Been a while. I didn’t see this extended break from action coming when the Juror’s Summons landed on my doorstep a few months ago. The letter said that trials normally finish within a week though they can on rare occasions extend into the next so I should ensure I had two weeks of potential service pencilled in. But to be honest I just thought I would get a welcome lie in on a Monday, wander in to the Court and sit around for a few hours before being thanked for my time and dismissed. Didn’t quite work out like that. The wheels of justice run very slowly indeed and once they have you in the snares they don’t let you go easily. I’ve been out for a fortnight and a day and sat on two trials. It’s been a pretty enlightening experience truth be told.
It’s ironic really given I think it was the last time I was talking to you I told you about Bob and various knife incidents. My first case at Cambridge Crown Court involved a psychiatrically challenged gent who amongst a long list of alleged misdemeanours held a knife to the throat of his landlord and threatened to kill him. If you are sitting comfortably I’ll begin.
The landlord was a well-meaning old man, single and with no family, who had taken the defendant, some twenty years his junior, under his own roof six or seven years earlier out of sympathy and with other fine intentions no doubt. During the intervening years, it transpired, the police had been called out to the property on 49 occasions as one breach of the peace followed another. But things clearly ratcheted up a level last summer after the arrival of two additional guests one of whom was an intriguing, suave and aptly named ( given this saga took place on the outskirts of Newmarket ) American called Jonty Stables.
The defendant’s behaviour became increasingly erratic possibly, it was suggested to us, stirred by jealousy. He began to extort money from the Good Samaritan as the old boy was described by the Newmarket Herald. He rampaged aggressively about the place, stole some laptops and also £250 from the purse of a friend of his, an elderly lady who had also been trying to help him find his way in life. It was a pretty open and shut case in all but one regard.
The afore mentioned American appeared in court as one of three witnesses to the knife incident, but also to testify on a further charge of affray that he claimed he had personally experienced when the defendant appeared in his bedroom in the middle of the night brandishing a knife and threatening all manner of dire injury. Although he was articulate and smartly dressed something didn’t ring true. No one else had witnessed the event, but more intriguingly he had difficulty answering a question put to him about how long the knife was. Comically, when he finally seized upon his spectacle case as being approximately the same size and it was suggested that implied the weapon was perhaps about six inches long, he placed the spectacle case on the floor and measured it against his shoe before concluding that it was indeed about half a foot. Anyway I had a eureka moment and when I was – and I’m trying not to sound like a swank here – elected Foreman I proposed that though it was clear the drug crazed nutter was guilty of most of the charges he faced perhaps he hadn’t actually held a knife to the throat of the slick American. And that is what we agreed. Didn’t matter very much to be honest. He’s gone down for three years. Poor guy. Can’t see what prison is going to do to help.
But as for the American I wasted no time, the case having concluded, in googling him to see if my suspicious instincts about him were right. This is what I found.
Interesting eh? Well that is if you are like me, a nosy sort needing a break from markets at the end of pretty tortuous CNY week. Don’t know about you but this quote from Mr Stables leapt out at me.
"When you have someone like myself who is nil risk to the public and the Home Office spent thousands of pounds trying to get rid of me, and they apparently don't lift a finger to get rid of someone who holds a knife to someone's throat - that needs to be looked at.”
Two stories that start and end with knives so that’s tidy and I think we got Mr Stables’ number don’t you?
The second case….well not quite so titillating. One for over a beer or two at some point.
Belated KHFC to you and have a lovely weekend.
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