I received this, this morning via WhatsApp. To say I was unimpressed by it is rather an understatement. The last two sentences are the killer.

Let me tell you the story of The Man With The Unmeritorious Defence.

Barry (for want of a better name) was charged with dangerous driving, drink driving and driving without insurance. I first met him at the Crown Court about half an hour before his plea hearing. He was a plucky, chatty lad, full of charm, with a handful of previous convictions.

The car he was in had been pulled over after a lengthy police chase, with a bunch of mates in the car whom the police had immediately allowed to leave, as he had been in the driver’s seat.

They had scarpered sharpish. He blew well in excess of 3 times the limit and was nicked.

I had read the brief and spoken to his solicitor a few days before meeting him. ‘Adamant not guilty plea but probably just needs a sensible chat with you - looks goosed’ was the general theme.

I sat down with Barry in a conference room and we went through the case. He was absolutely adamant that he wasn’t guilty of any of the offences.

Barry was a disqualified driver. He went off on the piss with his mates.

One of his mates drove to the next city, about 40 mins away. They meant to leave the car & get the train home, but they missed the last train.

They drove home. He told me his mate had been the driver.

Then the police appeared behind them and signalled to pull over. His mate, over the limit, panicked & took off. His driving was absolutely terrible and thoroughly dangerous.

There were bizarre intervals within the chase when the car slowed to 10mph & then took off again.

So how did Barry end up in the driver’s seat? He described events to me. He and his friends, all of them off their heads, had been screaming and shouting at one another as soon as the police appeared behind them.

In their drunken stupor, they had decided that Barry, who perceived himself to be less drunk (he said he had forgotten his ban at the time) should take over the driving, and this would make the situation OK when they were pulled over. So the driver had slowed the car to 10mph.

However, because it was a tiny car, they were fully grown men AND they were Very Drunk, they did not possess the gymnastic athleticism and driving skill required to perform their intended ridiculous seat-swap. So the driver stayed where he was.

It wasn’t until they stopped down a dark country lane, the police car taking 30 seconds or so to catch up with them, that they managed to swap seats, putting Barry in the driver’s seat.

“Did you get out of the car to swap?” I asked. “No”. “How many of you were in the car?” “4”.

I scoffed disbelievingly. He swore blind this was what had happened. It didn’t make sense, I told him. It had no logic. It also seemed physically unlikely. He started to laugh. He said it was the stupidest thing he’d ever done in his life, I told him it was the stupidest thing

I’d ever heard. I went back through the evidence. The car slowing down did correlate with the police’s description of a few moments where they were bemused as to what was going on (they thought it was a tactic). I noted there were passages of the journey where the car was going

through built up areas that may have had CCTV. I checked what he was arrested wearing (dark top) I asked him what the ‘real’ driver had been wearing (white shirt).

I asked if he had been through any fuel stations etc on the way home. He said he had. Just before the chase, they

had stopped at a garage for fuel and snacks. So he entered his NG plea.

The Judge raised his eyebrows and made a comment about the loss of guilty plea credit - did I require more time? (Code for ‘how long do you need to knock some sense into this idiot so that he pleads G’)

No thank you, I said. I said I would be making some requests of the Crown so that they were on notice.

The Judge didn’t say any more about it and we timetabled the trial.

Afterwards, I asked the Solicitor to request the police obtain CCTV from some specific locations en route.

Sure enough, footage from immediately before *and during* the police chase showed that a man with a white shirt had been driving the car.

I asked the Crown to reconsider prosecuting Barry.

There was some initial push back for a month or three, but eventually

they changed their minds and dropped the entire case against him before it got to trial. Part of their enquiries involved speaking to the police officer who stopped the car (and let white shirt do a runner).

Back to spurious defences and unmeritorous defences then.

I’m not overly criticising the Judge’s raised eyebrows in Barry’s case, I was sceptical too.

However, firmly pre-judging the merits of a defence doesn’t make you a good Judge, or a good Barrister; quite the opposite.

Imagine if Barry’s case had gone to trial, both with and without that CCTV.

Imagine if someone with lots of criminal experience had been trying it, without a jury. Imagine if they knew he was a banned driver, but had directed themselves to ignore it as it wasn’t admissible.

That’s why we have juries. They don’t bring their case-tired bias.

They don’t hear bad character applications (the evidence of Barry’s ban).

They assess based on the evidence before them.

I firmly believe that without juries many innocent people would go to jail.

We must do everything we can to prevent the erosion of trial by jury.

You might think “what a cock, who cares if he went to prison for a year, he deserved to”. Barry is someone’s son. The real driver, who thought it was a good idea to get behind the wheel while, on Barry’s account, he was more than 3 times over the limit, walks free. Justice?