Letter of the Law Second Thoughts on the Stephen Ward
Trial
By R. A. CLINE
rr HE brassy melodrama of the Ruby trial has I set a very high standard of sensationalism in criminal trials. Our appetite for legal drama now demands considerable whetting before it can be excited; it is as though we feed now on nothing but delicatessen. For many people the events of last year, when Dr. Stephen Ward stood his trial and every detail of his private life jammed our communication systems, have faded; it was just another meal. Others, however, have forgotten less easily, for to them the osteopath's trial and conviction came as a shock and a dis- illusionment. Journalistic and public insatiability on the one hand and political malice on the other had combined to put an unimportant man's un- important private life at the mercy of the British legal system. Because well-known people were involved and the facts were salacious, most of the world was watching that system cracking a very small and trivial nut. And to the distress of the onlookers—particularly the British ones —the system failed to measure up to the stan- dard which has come to be expected of it. Ludovic Kennedy's book The Trial of Stephen Ward* skilfully records his own growing distress as he watched, day after day, the legal pro- cesses by which an admittedly immoral man became stigmatised as a criminal. Like a race Commentator, he begins his narrative with reasonable calm, but as the trial nears its inevit- able conclusion his voice rises with an indigna- tion which finally scolds the whole British legal apparatus, wigs, gowns, and all. Can the trial be, dismissed with a shrug as an unfortunate epi- sode in British legal history or his criticisms as the professional anger of a writer? Regrettably, no: What happened at the Ward trial was not unique. It has happened before in the criminal Courts and it will no doubt happen again. But before we share Mr. Kennedy's indignation, let us first increase it by reminding him of the com- ment he himself mentions at the outset of his ,book. Our system is—with many reservations— the best we can do.' A criminal trial is an im- perfect court at which imperfect people bear witness to facts about which there is sometimes more than one truth. In France the ascertaining of that truth is the principal object of justice; the means used would disturb many Englishmen and the time taken to come to trial would shock them. In America bribery and political pressure but this sounds perilously like legal chauvinism. The fact is that our legal system, like our constitution, works fairly if its operators are lair; it can resemble the Star Chamber if they are not. And it still remains true that you are
more likely to obtain a fair trial in this country than not.
Having said that, one's sense of shock at the conduct of the Ward trial is perhaps the greater. ithe first place, the trial ought never to have la+en place at all, even if Ward had been guilty the offences of which he was convicted. It is tantastic to recall that the apparatus of the State w s wasted for so many man-hours, and especi- ally Police-hours, in the investigation and collection' of evidence E0 as to establish that the girls made money through the prostitution of tirie girls Mandy Rice-. Davies and Christine Keeler. That he did not make, but probably lost, fl'utleY through his association with them is *G°11aricz. 25s.
abundantly apparent from Mr Kennedy's account of the trial evidence. But that a detective chief inspector should be occupied in interviewing 140 witnesses, apart from his prolonged sessions with Ward and the two girls, requires some explana- tion, not only in relation to the case itself, but to the public interest. Is this conceivably the right use of precious police-power?
Mr. Kennedy's explanation may be right. 'I think the answer lies not in the specific orders of any one person but in the spontaneous actions of the many. When the establishment closes its ranks, when authority takes arms against what it mistakenly believes to be a sea of corruption, there is no need for the posting of battalion orders. Within the hierarchy each member knows what is required of him, what he must do: and during the long investigation and trial each man did it.' Or was it that the law officers or the Director of Public Prosecutions were anxious that no one should accuse them of hushing any- thing up and protecting the Government? It should not be forgotten that the press were then in full gallop, pursuing every trail, false and true. An over-eager desire to put the record straight and show that if the politicians were in it up to the neck, the law at any rate was above sus- picion—could this have originated the lamentable train of legal events that followed?
Once the fuse was lit nothing could ap- parently stop its precipitous course. The timing of the trial was quite extraordinary. At the very moment when prosecuting counsel was making his closing address and urging on the jury that they should treat the testimony of Christine Keeler as reliable, the news came to the court that the Lord Chief Justice in another court had allowed Lucky Gordon's appeal against his conviction. No one knew why, because the court did not disclose the fresh evidence which founded its decision. But one thing was clear: there was at that moment at least a possibility that Keeler, one of the two principal witnesses for the prose- cution, was lying. It is the duty of an English prosecution and an English court to do justice to an accused. Here was a good chance (it later turned out to be a certainty) that a man might be convicted on the evidence of a perjurer. This was the moment to halt the trial, to make sure. Where was the need for so much hurry? A speedy trial is granted in the interests of the accused, but in this case delay was the one thing that would have saved him. For Christine Keeler later pleaded guilty to perjury.
In his closing speech, Mr. Mervyn Griffith- Jones, having announced the granting of Lucky Gordon's appeal, made this comment: 'That does not of course mean to say that the Court of Criminal Appeal have found that Miss Keeler is lying. As I understand from the note I have, the Lord Chief Justice said that it might be that Miss Keeler's evidence was completely truthful, but in view of the fact that there were witnesses now available who were not available at the trial, it was felt that the court would not necessarily say that the jury in that case would have returned the same verdict as they did if these two witnesses had been called. That is all it amounts to. The Court of Criminal Appeal have not found whether Miss Keeler was telling the truth; they have allowed the appeal simply and solely because these two witnesses were not there.' This is right as far'as it goes, but it does not go as far as justice to Ward demanded. Christine Keeler might have been telling the truth, but it was equally important for the jury to know that she might have been telling lies. A little less hurry
in the dispatching of the Ward trial and the ugly fact that she was a perjurer would have made Ward's acquittal a certainty.
If Ward was indicted on five counts, the English trial system is indicted by Mr. Kennedy, as he observed it in the Ward case, on at least six counts. His first is that the committal pro- ceedings in the magis:rate's court, which are the preliminary step to this type of trial, prejudice the accused in the eyes of the jury before they hear a word uttered. The publicity given to this case made it quite certain that the jury had read all about Ward and that they subconsciously, as we all did, believed there must be something in it. Warnings from the judge and prosecution do not really help. Mr. Kennedy is right: pre- liminary proceedings are prejudicial and they take up a lot of was:ed time in the magistrates' courts. Their replacement by documentary evi- dence is now an urgent necessity.
His second count is that the prosecution's opening speech.can be nighty damaging to the accused--it is the jury's first contact with the case—and should be restricted to a bare outline of the facts. A prosecutor should certainly take care that what he then says is likely to be sup- ported by later evidence; the speech should not be a device for rousing the jury's emotions against the accused. Mr. Kennedy was rightly sur- prised to hear the prosecution 'saying, 'Ward introduced Christine Keeler to one Peter Rach- man, of whom you have read in the newspapers.' Now in the first place, juries are urged not to bring into court the facts they have read in the newspapers; secondly, there was never any evi- dence for the prejudicial statement; thirdly, it did not form part of any charge against Ward and was wholly irrelevant.
The remaining counts against the system must be dealt with summarily. The judge's attitude towards the prosecution's case emerges with awful clarity from Mr. Kennedy's narrative. A particularly memorable passage was the question addressed to the detective chief inspector which resulted in that witness getting out of a very tight corner. And then there was the summing-up, about Which Mr. Kennedy has some very courageous things to say. It is an important stage in the trial; a confused jury is seeking the light and the judge's sympathies may (though they often conspicuously fail to) sway the jury. The function of a summing-up is to present the evi- dence for both sides in digestible form so that a choice can be made by the jury; regrettably, the temptation to exceed that function is huge and the occasions on which the excess occurs in our courts are many. This part of Mr. Kennedy's narrative presents an all too recognisable situation.
Should the prosecution have the last as well as the first word, asks Mr. Kennedy. If both are factual and unemotional, as they should be, yes. But on the evidence before him he could hardly be blamed for concluding that the system should be changed. Finally, is the 'amateurish' jury system due for abolition? That an illiterate there can serve o
errseis coa gosoeddeain room f or suggests nipro v emtehnat t. of rouch But before Mr. Kennedy finally opts for this, the one opportunity for the laymen to participate in the reserved areas of the professional lawyers and to import ordinary standards of common sense, he should try and forget the Ward trial and remember Lady Chatteriey's Lover.
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