In the Central Criminal Court

So there I was in the dock of the Central Criminal Court – the old Bailey. The trial finally got under way. First the jury details were settled and then the action began, the prosecution being the first to take the floor. The prosecuting counsel was a tall, thin man, who seemed to enjoy his job. He began with a rather offhand introduction and started calling the prosecution witnesses, while Rollins, the defence counsel, looked on with a bored expression on his face. I had met Rollins twice and knew he had almost no hope of winning my case. I was going to plead not guilty but there was too much evidence against me.

The prosecution witnesses were being sworn in one after another. They were good – very good, indeed – and I began to see why the prosecuting counsel was looking so cheerful. Expert police witnesses introduced photographs and drawings of the scene of the crime.

There was the motherly old lady who had identified me at the police station. “I saw him strike the postman,” she testified, the light of honesty shining from her eyes. “I was standing in the corridor and saw the accused hit the postman with his fist, grab a yellow box from him and push him into the office. Then the accused ran down the stairs.”

The prosecutor offered her a plan of the second floor. “Where were you standing?”

She pointed out a place in the corridor and looked across the court straight at me. The sweet old lady was lying, and she knew that I knew she was lying. She couldn’t have been standing in the corridor because I had checked, and the details of her evidence were all wrong, anyway. There wasn’t a thing I could do about it, though.

A hotel employee testified that the accused stayed at his hotel.

The postman gave his evidence fairly. I had hit him and he had recovered consciousness in my office. There was nothing in that which contradicted the evidence of the sweet old lady. The third eye-witness was the office boy from the office opposite mine; he said he saw me lock the office door and run downstairs.

There wasn’t much after that. I said my words, and the prosecutor tore me into pieces. Rollins tried to save me without much success. The judge summed up and directed the jury to find me guilty. The jury was out only half and hour and the verdict was what I had expected.

Then the judge asked if I had anything to say, so I spoke up with just two words:” I’m innocent.” After that the judge got up to pronounce the sentence.

“Joseph Aloysius Rearden, you have been found guilty of stealing by force diamonds to the value of $ 173, 000. It falls to me to sentence you for the crime. I sentence you to twenty years’ detention in such prison or prisons as the appropriate authority thinks fit”.

(After “The Freedom Trap” by D. Bagley)

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