about to ask our usher very nicely if he’ll do me some copies. Are you doing the trial?” I wonder, mentally planning my trial strategy against him.
“Nope, I’m off on holiday for a few months so it’ll be sent out. Right, I’ll tell the court we’re ready.”
“Thanks, I just have one other person to see then I’m all yours.”
I resume my position in the conference room and fish out Mr. Lenihan’s report. As I read the first page a feeling of dread envelops me. It is clear from the document that Mr. Lenihan maintains his innocence in respect of the assault despite pleading guilty. Worse than that, he has told the author of the report that he only pleaded guilty because Serena told him to. His exact phrase is ‘My barrister said that no-one would believe me and not to waste her time because she had better things to be doing than representing a liar like me.’ God, this is not good. I step back out onto the concourse and shout
“Mr. Lenihan? Mr. Brian Lenihan?”
A man wearing an ill fitting polyester suit stands up and approaches me. I know from his report that he’s forty two, but he looks a lot older. He has dark hair tied back in a stringy ponytail and a long thin moustache. His beady eyes look me up and down before speaking.
“You’re not the bird I had last time”
I sigh. Here we go again.
“No Mr. Lenihan, you were represented by Miss Taylor on the last occasion. I’m afraid she wasn’t available today, so you have me. If you’d be kind enough to follow me, there are a number of things I need to discuss with you.”
I don’t wait to see if he responds to this, but turn on my spike heel and walk back to the now familiar cupboard. Happily he has acceded to my request and has perched on the side of the table. I weigh up the merits of telling him he’s not in a barn and decide against it; at the moment we have bigger fish to fry.
“I have here a copy of your pre-sentence report. In it, you appear to have said that you were pressurised into pleading guilty. Firstly, do you accept that this is what you said?”
He looks at me defiantly.
“Yes, too right that’s what I said!”
I take a deep breath. Crunch time.
“Ok, second question, do you maintain that that is actually what happened?”
“Hell yes. That bitch made me do it. I was all ready for my trial, had all my defence witnesses here too. She told me that if I had a trial I would definitely be found guilty and I’d go to prison for twice as long because of it. I mean that’s a lot of porridge.”
I exhale. If this is true then Serena has really messed up. I’m going to have to explain all of this to the Judge in a minute and hope he’ll allow Mr. Lenihan to remove his plea. Serena will have to come to court to explain herself too.
“Right Mr. Lenihan, I’ll make the court aware of your position and don’t forget that the Judge will have a copy of this report too, so all is not lost yet.”
I spend a few minutes reminding him of the possible consequences of this route and leave him, satisfied that he knows his options. Why on earth would Serena have done this? Of course, it may all be a load of nonsense concocted by Mr. Lenihan in an attempt to backtrack, scared of what the Judge might do to him today. Relief washes over me. Yes! That must be it. He’s just panicking about going to prison and wants to buy himself more time.
I open the brief and look for Serena’s endorsement from the last occasion. It’s customary to get Defendant’s ‘signed up’; asking them to put their name to a paragraph on the back of the brief confirming that they do want to plead guilty and that no pressure has been put on them to do so. Despite several minutes spent carefully poring over the pages, I can’t find anything resembling this. Damn. I turn on my phone and try Serena’s number several times but her phone appears to be switched off.
As Mr. Lenihan’s case is called on into court I hear my heart beating in my ears and feel slightly nauseous. It’s one thing when you have to explain your mistakes to a crowded court, but to have to land a friend in