16 APRIL 1994, Page 30

Yes, we dare

Sir: Alasdair Palmer (`The case of the van- ishing witnesses', 26 March) tells us that `more than 300 cases have collapsed over the past two years because of successful intimidation of witnesses'. This is horrifying enough, but judges themselves can be, and may well have been, the victims of such intimidation. Might not threats of violence to them and their families account for some of the otherwise inexplicably derisory sen- tences they continue to dispense, and for their reversal of seemingly cast-iron convic- tions? We shall never know the answer, but dare you publish such a questioning of judi- cial integrity?

Peter Hadley

Poldowrian, Coverack, Helston, Cornwall

'What we spend together is quantity time.'