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Overview
'GRIPPING' – THE TIMES
'FASCINATING, NO-HOLDS-BARRED' – THE SECRET BARRISTER
How can you speak up for someone accused of a savage murder? Or sway a jury? Or get a judge to drop a case?
William Clegg QC is a leading criminal lawyer in London. In this vivid memoir, he revisits his most notorious and intriguing trials, from the acquittal of Colin Stagg to the murder of Jill Dando, to the man given life because of an earprint and the first Nazi war crimes prosecution in the UK.
All the while he lays bare the secrets of his profession, from the rivalry among barristers to the nervous moments before a verdict comes back — and how our right to a fair trial is now at risk.
Under the Wig is for anyone who wants to know the reality of a murder trial. It's an intelligent crime read for fans of The Secret Barrister's books and Unnatural Causes by Dr Richard Shepherd.
Well-known cases featured:
- Murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common
- Chillenden Murders of Dr Lin and Megan Russell
- Lee Clegg, when Labour leader Keir Starmer was his junior
- Murder of Jill Dando
- First Nazi war crimes prosecution in the UK
- Murder of Joanna Yeates
- Rebekah Brooks Phone Hacking Trial
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781912454099 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Canbury |
| Publication date: | 10/04/2018 |
| Sold by: | Bookwire |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 282 KB |
About the Author
As London's leading murder case lawyer, William Clegg represented clients at some of the best-known criminal trials in English legal history.
In all during 47 years as a leading advocate, he fought more than 100 murder cases, more than any other barrister currently practising in Britain.
His cases ranged from serial killers to alleged Nazi war criminals to ordinary members of the public innocently caught up in police investigations. They include:
- the Wimbledon Common Murder of Rachel Nickell
- the Chillenden Murders (Dr Lin and Megan Russell)
- the Earprint Murder
- the Murder of Jill Dando
- Private Lee Clegg (Northern Ireland)
- the Murder of Joanna Yeates
- Nazi War Crimes in Britain
- Rebekah Brooks's Phone Hacking Trial
- and International War Crimes Tribunal (Yugoslavia)
When Clegg represented paratrooper Lee Clegg in Belfast, his junior in the long-running appeal case was Keir Starmer, future leader of the Labour Party.
A Queen's Counsel (now King's Counsel), Clegg capped his long-running career at the Bar as head of chambers at 2 Bedford Row in London. He is now retired and lives in Sussex.
William Clegg QC is one of the most celebrated criminal lawyers in England.
A practising barrister for 47 years, he has fought more than 100 murder cases, more than anyone else practising at the English Bar.
As London's leading murder case layer, he has represented clients at some of the best-known criminal trials in living memory. His cases include the Wimbledon Common Murder of Rachel Nickell; the Chillenden Murders (Dr Lin and Megan Russell); the Earprint Murder; the Murder of Jill Dando; Private Lee Clegg (Northern Ireland); the Murder of Joanna Yeates; Nazi War Crimes in Britain; Rebekah Brooks’s Phone Hacking Trial; and International War Crimes Tribunal (Yugoslavia)
He is head of chambers at 2 Bedford Row in London.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Case 1
The Wimbledon Common Murder
Some crimes are so savage and so unsettling that detectives come under an almost unbearable pressure to solve them. In this case, Rachel Nickell, a 23-year-old mother, found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time when she went for a walk on Wimbledon Common, south-west London, on 15 July 1992.
Rachel was with her three-year-old son, Alex, and their labrador, Molly, when a man dragged her into the undergrowth, sexually assaulted her, stabbed her 49 times, and cut her throat. Alex was found by a passer-by clinging to his mother's blood-soaked body, desperately pleading with her to wake up.
Rachel was especially photogenic and the fact that her young son had witnessed the murder, and that it had happened in daylight in much-loved heathland in the capital thrust the murder to the top of the news headlines, where it remained for weeks.
The pressure on London's police force to catch Ms Nickell's killer was intense. Unfortunately for the Metropolitan Police no-one saw the bloodied killer leaving the common. No forensic evidence from the crime-scene identified a suspect. Under the relentless gaze of the media, the investigators turned to a new development in police inquiries: criminal profiling. A psychologist, Paul Britton, was asked to create a psychological assessment of the kind of individual who would have committed the crime.
Britton gave the police a description of the man they should be seeking. He would be a sexually repressed loner who lived on his own close to the scene of the crime. He would be in his twenties or thirties. He would have an interest in the occult and in knives and be sexually repressed.
The police made door-to-door inquiries in the area around Wimbledon Common and questioned more than 30 men. They also broadcast a photofit picture of two unidentified men seen on the common, one with long hair, another with short hair. Four callers identified the short-haired man as Colin Stagg, a 31-year-old unemployed man who lived locally.
Just as Britton had predicted, Colin was something of a loner. Like Ms Nickell, he enjoyed walking his dog, Brandy, on the common. He had no previous convictions, but during the three days he was questioned by police he admitted that he had sunbathed naked in a secluded patch of the common and that a woman may have seen him doing so.
A woman whom Colin had been in touch with after she responded to a lonely hearts advert also contacted detectives: Colin, she said, had written to her graphically suggesting various sexual activity they could engage in. Detectives also found some books on the occult in Colin's flat. A witness described seeing a man fitting Colin's appearance on the common at around the time the murder took place and subsequently picked him out at an identity parade.
In the police's eyes, Colin had become the prime suspect. The pieces of the jigsaw were falling into place. The only problem was the lack of hard evidence. It was true that Colin had been on the common that day and one witness had picked him out at an identity parade. But that was it — not a speck of forensic evidence linked him to the crime scene. Police were forced to release their prime suspect without charge.
They then asked Britton to design a covert operation to prove or disprove that an unidentified suspect killed Ms Nickell. Britton suggested that if a woman were to befriend the suspect and feign interest in violent sexual fantasies he might end up admitting to her that he was the murderer. Operation Ezdell was duly launched. An attractive female undercover officer was asked to pose as the friend of a woman Colin had previously contacted through the lonely hearts column. 'Lizzie James' (a pseudonym) embarked on five months of phone calls, letters and four meetings with Colin, all of which were recorded for use as evidence. Throughout she feigned a sexual interest in Colin and they traded sexual fantasies. She held out the lure of sex as bait.
Colin was a virgin and he admitted to Lizzie that he had occasional fantasies involving violence, but at no point did he admit any involvement in Ms Nickell's murder, despite Lizzie repeatedly raising it in conversation. At one point she dangled her sexual compliance to him in exchange for him confessing all, telling Colin: 'If only you had done the Wimbledon Common murder. If only you had killed her, it would be alright.' Colin replied: 'I'm terribly sorry, but I haven't.' That should have been enough to end the honey trap. But instead Mr Britton changed tack saying instead that the conversations between Colin and Lizzie James, although not including any admission to the killing, were sufficient to satisfy him that Colin must be the killer.
A short time later Colin was re-arrested and charged with Rachel's murder. He spent almost a year on remand in Brixton Prison awaiting trial. From the moment I met Colin in prison, he struck me as a most improbable murderer. There appeared to be no conceivable motive for someone who had never been in trouble before committing such an appalling and uncharacteristic crime. He didn't seem to be remotely aggressive and in fact came across as a rather passive individual. I thought it said a lot about him that many of his neighbours signed a card wishing him luck, which I do not remember happening in any other murder trial.
I saw Colin seven or eight times in prison in the run-up to the trial, which started in September 1994, to take instructions and to build up a rapport. He wasn't unintelligent. He was rather immature, but was living a perfectly contented life in a small council flat. We had pretty much nothing in common apart from the fact that we both had dogs called Brandy. He adored his dog. It was put into kennels at a dogs' home after he was remanded to Brixton. At one point Colin became convinced that Brandy had died and the thought preoccupied him to the exclusion of everything else. He once went on hunger strike for several days over something to do with his dog. My junior Jim Sturman went down to the kennels to visit it on one occasion. Sometimes when I saw Colin he was more worried about the dog than he was about himself.
Colin's case was due to be tried like all serious cases in Britain before a jury of 12 members of the public, who would decide whether he was guilty after listening to the evidence presented by both sides.
It was scheduled to be heard at the Central Criminal Court, better known as the Old Bailey — the biggest and most historic criminal court in London. Heading up the prosecution were a leading barrister, a junior barrister and some solicitors. Our defence team comprised a leading barrister (me), a junior barrister (Jim Sturman) and a solicitor. As well as defending Colin, we were there to support him. He didn't have any friends or family at court. He had started a relationship with a woman while he was in custody, but she hadn't met him in person by that stage and she wasn't in court.
Before the jury start their work, the defence and prosecution can argue over procedural aspects of the case. This legal argument takes place in open court, but the media can't report what is said until after the case, so that jurors don't hear any evidence that the judge rules is inadmissible.
Before the jury was sworn in at the Old Bailey I sought to exclude Lizzie James's evidence. The legal argument lasted three days, during which I contended that it was preposterous to view Colin's denial to her of any involvement in Ms Nickell's killing as a tacit admission on his part that he had killed her. I also disputed the expertise of Mr Britton, the psychologist, arguing that his opinion was not properly to be admitted as expert evidence. When one analysed what he had done, I argued, he was relying on guesswork and supposition.
I argued that Colin was being tricked by the police into saying things that the criminal profiler claimed were incriminating, and that it was about as far from a case of him volunteering information to an undercover police officer (which would have been perfectly admissible) as one could conceive. This was the reverse — the police were manipulating Colin and controlling the conversations in an attempt to direct him as to what he would say.
My opposite number, John Nutting, did his best to counteract the force of my submission. He had accepted the case at short notice after another barrister had dropped out. It was obvious to John, I'm sure, that it was a very difficult case to present because of the way detectives had gathered the evidence.
At the end of the legal argument, the judge, Mr Justice Ognall retired for almost a week to consider what both sides had said. Notwithstanding the importance of the decision, that was quite a long time. In a high-profile case like that a judge is very anxious to arrive at the correct ruling. Apart from anything else if they get it wrong, it will be overturned at the Court of Appeal, which is embarrassing.
We were confident about our argument, but we were not sure we would win. Nowadays you might get a draft copy of a judgment before you go into court, but that wasn't so here. Mr Justice Ognall started by reviewing all the evidence before reading out his ruling for more than an hour. The courtroom was tense as everyone sat in silence waiting to find out what would happen. But as I listened, I started to get an inkling. Then there came a moment when I knew we had won: the judge was going to exclude Lizzie James's evidence. Once it was knocked out the prosecution had no evidence to offer and Colin was formally found not guilty. He sat in the dock behind us, looking shellshocked. We locked eyes and I smiled, but he didn't really react.
After half an hour Colin was finally released from the cells below the court and gave me a hug. It was quite emotional. I had warmed to him by that stage. I sometimes get very close to my clients when I am contributing to what will probably be the most important moment in their lives. I feel I could sensibly become friends with some of them. Colin did not fall into that category, but I was genuinely delighted he had been found not guilty because I knew it was the right verdict.
There was a huge media scrum outside the Old Bailey but we managed to spirit Colin away out the back door and he was driven off to my chambers in a taxi. Unfortunately, immediately after the case collapsed the police gave a press conference at which they said they weren't looking for anybody else for Ms Nickell's murder — the classic thing they say when they want to imply that a judge has let a guilty man off. Colin had been pilloried in the press since he was first arrested and the police were giving off-the-record briefings to journalists to the effect that he had escaped justice because of a technicality.
If the evidence collected by the undercover police officer had been allowed into the trial, I don't think it would have swayed the jury, but you can never be sure. Juries do unpredictable things. I think the police officers had convinced themselves that Colin had murdered Ms Nickell. They became so desperate to solve the murder that they thought it must be him because they couldn't imagine it being anyone else.
At any rate, Colin had been found not guilty. The ruling was probably my single biggest victory up to that point and boosted my career. It created a bit of a precedent and has been relied upon in other cases since.
Had the trial gone ahead I would have enjoyed cross-examining Mr Britton. It could have been one of the great cross-examinations of my career, but I much preferred to win the case beforehand. Defence barristers will happily take the folding of the prosecution case above being able to tear into a witness. Had the undercover policewoman been called to give evidence I could not have been too hard on her. She would have simply said: 'I only did what the criminal profiler told me to do.' Her evidence would have been largely uncontroversial.
In my opinion the vast majority of work criminal profilers do is rubbish. I don't think there has been a single case where they have done the remotest good; what they do is based on guesswork. (I did an appeal many years ago where a criminal profiler, supposedly one of the finest in his field, prepared a report for the appeal stating that in his view a particular defendant was not guilty of murder and that his wife had committed suicide. Fair enough, perhaps — except that he had prepared a report saying the opposite, that the wife hadn't committed suicide, at the man's trial, saying on appeal that his original opinion was wrong!)
So far as Colin was concerned all that mattered was that he was reunited with Brandy, who fortunately recognised him even though they had been apart for months. I helped Colin negotiate the finer points of a deal with the News of the World. The paper offered him £100,000 for his story after he was cleared, but would only go ahead on condition that he took a lie detector test. I was very suspicious of this. I didn't have much faith in the tests and I had even less faith in the News of the World. I thought it was all a stitch-up, but that turned out not to be the case. He passed the lie detector test with flying colours and they paid him the money. I remember advising him that he should use it to buy his council flat. With a client like Colin, I can find myself giving personal as well as professional advice. I'm pretty sure Colin didn't buy his flat but I haven't seen him for many years.
Even after the trial collapsed nobody could be absolutely certain at that stage that Colin hadn't killed Rachel Nickell. But it was not long before I was convinced that I knew the identity of the man who had.
CHAPTER 2Perry Mason and the Art of Advocacy
Perry Mason made me want to become a barrister. He won American murder cases weekly on the black and white television in the sitting room of our family home in early 1960s England. I loved the drama of his plots and the theatre of his showdowns. Mason took on unpromising, almost hopeless cases; yet he never lost them and at the end of every episode the back door of the courtroom would break open and the crucial witness would walk through. As an advocate, Mason wasn't particularly flamboyant. He was very dignified and understated in an almost British way.
I became fixed on the idea of becoming a barrister, which I think my parents thought was a little over-ambitious. They ran a florist's shop in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, and there were no 'professionals' on either side of my family; my relatives were mostly shopkeepers or factory workers. I remember my father saying to me: 'If you want a good profession how about pharmacy? You could open a chemist's shop. If you did well you could open another one and start a chain of chemist's shops.' I think he could identify with a career like that more easily. He knew people who had chemist's shops and they did very well.
It looked like my parents' caution was well founded when I failed the Eleven Plus exams required for grammar school. Instead, I went to a Roman Catholic secondary modern school, St Thomas More, and then Westcliff High School for Boys, where I took A-Levels in history, geography and economics. My two As and a B won me a place at Bristol University to study for a Bachelor of Laws. (Oxford or Cambridge were out of the question: to study law there in those days you had to have O-Level Latin. Unsurprisingly, St Thomas More didn't include Latin in its curriculum.)
A full grant from Southend Council paid for my tuition fees and halls of residence, meaning I had breakfast, dinner and somewhere to sleep, and some change left over. I pitched myself into university life and had quite a hectic social life; I drank a lot of beer. But I wasn't a member of any outrageous dining clubs — I didn't have the money. An expensive night out was a pizza and a bottle of red wine.
In 1968, my first year at Bristol, students had rioted in Paris and there was much publicity about student revolts and sit-ins at universities in England. I was only involved on the fringe, but I took part in anti-Apartheid demonstrations outside Barclays Bank and Gloucestershire Cricket Club, which had taken on the South African all-rounder Mike Procter. (I later realised how much he had done for the underprivileged in his country). I also took part in sit-ins. In truth they usually took place after we'd been out drinking; it was something to do to keep warm before you staggered home. My politics were broadly left-wing but the vast majority of my fellow students (who were to the left of Stalin) viewed me as a reactionary.
(Continues…)
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