RUSSELL WINNOCK
Confessions of a Barrister
The Friday Project
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015
Copyright © Russell Winnock 2015
Cover illustration © Katie May
Russell Winnock asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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Source ISBN: 9780008100346
Ebook Edition © August 2015 ISBN: 9780008100339
Version: 2015-09-15
To my Dad, who taught me to always try to look after
those who struggle to look after themselves
This book is dedicated to the Judges, barristers, solicitors, court staff, clients and criminals who have inspired the stories. All names and events have been changed, but each story and event has its genesis in some case or incident that has actually happened.
The buzzer. The buzzer of doom. The buzzer that indicates that the jury have reached a verdict and are now ready to come back into the courtroom to deliver it. Guilty or not guilty, thatâs what the buzzer means. And as soon as I hear it, the pace of my heart starts to quicken and I feel the prickle of sweat forming under my wig.
I look behind me to the dock where my client, a pockmarked and serially dishonest rogue and drug addict by the name of Brian Fordyke, sits, charged with shoplifting. The trial has not gone particularly well for him.
Iâm in court sixteen of the City Crown Court. Itâs a court where odd things happen, far away from the gaze of the media and the high-profile cases. It is tucked away, ancient, dusty and largely ignored. It is where I ply my trade as a barrister. In court sixteen the buzzer is followed by the footsteps â heavy, foreboding footsteps on the wooden floor that leads from the jury room to the courtroom: clomp, clomp, clomp.
And with every footstep, the verdict âguiltyâ or ânot guiltyâ, happiness or sadness, freedom or incarceration is brought a clomping step nearer.
The door from the jury room to the courtroom opens and in they walk. The usual vengeful suspects: my jury, Brian Fordykeâs jury. Thereâs the little old lady who has sucked Everton Mints religiously throughout the trial; the bloke with the tattoos who sat and stared utterly oblivious to my attempts to persuade him of Brian Fordykeâs innocence; the middle-class man who has worn a suit throughout; the hippy lady in the flowing blouse who chose to affirm rather than swear on the Bible (always nice to get a couple of liberals on the jury); and the pretty girl to whom I found myself paying far too much attention during my closing speech. These and the seven others clomp towards their place in the jury box and sit down.