Further Action

Doreen Lawrence, in calling for a line to be drawn under the murder of her son, is effectively, and rightly, calling for the return of the old law of double jeopardy, the change to which has now done its work. Sadiq Khan is illustrating what a good Mayor David Lammy or Diane Abbott would have been. And Cressida Dick, of Jean Charles de Menezes infamy, is trying to blame social media.

But not all knife crime in London is treated in the same way, you understand. There is to be no further action against Richard Osborn-Brooks. After consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service, apparently. The same CPS that now has only two working days until my trial on Wednesday at Durham Crown Court. Be there for nine o'clock, and they will see me when they see me. Don't worry, as there will be other entertainment in the meantime, and, like my star turn, it will be free. Who needs the pictures? 

The supposed similarities between the letter and my published work were comprehensively refuted when the Police first interviewed me, on 13th March 2017. Those similarities either did not exist, or they were attributed quotations from the work of other people, including William Shakespeare. The hypothetical possibility of a fingerprint was also dealt with and dismissed in full on that occasion, as being entirely explicable in terms of my having at some time loaded a ream on paper into the printer either at Lanchester Library or at Durham Clayport Library. 

I was charged on the basis of the existence of two fingerprints that were supposed to have been mine beyond reasonable doubt, yet the Crown has produced only one fingerprint that may or may not have come (as, in point of fact, it has not) from one of my hands but not from the other, on one side but not the other of a folded piece of paper. There is no computer or other electronic evidence. There is no handwriting evidence. There is no DNA evidence. There is no proof of postage. I shall say that again: there is no evidence that the letter was ever posted, not only by me, but by anyone.

Although I have had no contact with any alleged victim in this case while these matters have been ongoing, none of them has removed me as a friend on Facebook, nor has any of them stopped following me on Twitter. That includes the complainant in this case, Councillor Carl Marshall, who, entirely by his own choice, both remains my friend on Facebook, and continues to follow me on Twitter. If that has changed between my posting this and your reading it, then it will have changed in response to this post, and probably not on Carl's initiative. 

My good character is evidenced by the fact that while these proceedings have been ongoing, I have been elected unopposed as a Public Governor of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust (the only unopposed election of which I have ever heard there, and possibly the only one that there has ever been), and I have taken a creditable 203 votes for the Lanchester Ward of Durham County Council, as well as a more than creditable 302 votes for Lanchester Parish Council. Those figures are universally regarded as having been artificially reduced by the persecution of me. Even so, though, my neighbours voted for me in their hundreds. The verdict of my peers, indeed.

The political point of this prosecution was made when I was not elected to the County Council, 11 months ago. And if there is no public interest in prosecuting the father of Poppi Worthington, then there is certainly none in prosecuting me. Be there on Wednesday. Not least to see who will not dare to show their faces. Simon Henig and the recently sacked Alison Saunders, whose train fare Henig could easily pay out of his allowances, that includes you. We shall all be keeping an eye out for you.