Clients and other animals

In the dark days of winter we need a little light to make us smile in the gloom. It is dark in the morning, it is dark as you leave court, you never see the house in daylight from Sunday to Saturday – if you are busy over lunch you will never even be outside in the daylight, or only rarely. Indeed, for those stuck in offices watching the sun set at four o’clock and internally howling at the moon at the prospect of another three hours at least at work, in the dark, where do we turn for some light relief?

At times like these we can turn to our ever-resourceful clients and their instructions. Sometimes they just give us great pause for thought and reflection. We have had some corkers – the self-defence brief in which it was considered reasonable to inflict ten stab wounds on an unarmed person springs to mind. There are those with an extraordinary amount of cannabis plants, all for personal use; so stoned must our client be ordinarily that it is amazing they could remember their own name when arrested. There are the fantastic bootleggers bringing it in by
the vanload for a ‘little party’ at the weekend – a little party where every guest is allocated seven bottles of vodka, 28 pints of beer, 16 cans of cider and
a dozen bottles of red wine.
It’s presumably not ‘bring
a bottle’, then.

Hope springs eternal in the criminal mind, that desperate hope that maybe, just maybe, the jury will fall for it. The identification case where the defendant has such a distinctive walk, or jacket, or dog is a true favourite. Then there are the global conspiracies, where several random people who have never met all say the same thing without any reason at all to bear a grudge – or hostile animus, as we like to say.
But this week took the biscuit with a startling headline in The Independent: “Man blamed dog for doing nearly 100mph”.

It was reported that
the defendant blamed his Staffordshire bull terrier (Buster) for sitting on the pedals when he was caught driving at close to 100mph. Jailing the defendant for 13 months, the judge at Durham Crown Court said that his account was “ludicrous.” Defence counsel must have a fantastic poker face because this really is a new one. Many people blame others – people, I stress – for their alleged wrongdoing, but to start blaming the dog breaks new ground. Of course,
it is pretty unfair on the dog – although, presumably, Buster (not separately represented) could have been jointly charged and likewise received the minimum ban and been required to take an extended driving test before being allowed to sit on the pedals again.

Dogs do crop up from time to time: there are those on the side of the angels of course, the police dogs, and there are the baddies, the illegal breeds and those who go about ‘worrying’ sheep (presumably by telling them the truth about shepherd’s pie) – but to be mixed up in a wholly new area of offending (driving cases) is a first. What next? Dogs carrying out armed robberies or running Class A drug operations and cannabis factories? It could get even better – presumably all that cannabis is the dog’s own personal supply. Thanks, Buster – you’ve really cheered me up. SJ

Felix is the pen name of a criminal barrister practising from London

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