LETTERS Aitken on trial
Sir: Nicholas Farrell quotes Alan Rus- bridger of the Guardian ('Who? Where? When? Above all, why?', 28 June) as indi- cating that George Carman QC had said that 'it would have been very difficult to cross-examine Victoria [Aitken]'. 'When I say cross-examine,' says Rusbridger, 'I mean tear apart somebody in the way they do. You just can't flay a 17-year-old girl.' Even if Mr Rusbridger's language is a mite over-dramatic, and making allowance for this, I cannot, as a practising barrister, begin to agree with that view. Of course a lay client may indicate that a particular wit- ness against him should be dealt with in a certain fashion, but if a client of mine want- ed to dictate the line of cross-examination I would refuse the brief, as, I suspect, would George Carman. You cannot run a case with your hands tied behind your back. If your opponents put into the witness box a vulnerable person, that is their affair. Over a year ago I was defending a man on a criminal charge. A prosecution witness whom I was cross-examining collapsed in the witness box. He had a bad heart. Upon his recovering I was asked to `go easy' on him. I refused. The prosecution could pro- tect him by abandoning the case. They did. My duty in that instance was to my client, not to the witness. The same is true in civil cases, and thus any gallantry or restraint in cross-examining a 17-year-old — or a child of any age of full understanding — would, in my view, be unreal if the proper interests of one's client demanded otherwise.
Stanley Best
Glebe Cottage, Broadwoodkelly, Winkleigh, Devon
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