You Have No Case, And No Time In Which To Prepare One

Just sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, copied to my solicitor and to journalists:

Dear Sir or Madam,

As business closes this afternoon, you have less than a week, including the weekend, in which to prepare any case against me in time for my trial date (11th April, at Durham Crown Court). Frankly, that is impossible. But then, you never have had a case against me. 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, yet you charged me a month later on the basis of a single fingerprint that may or may not have come (as, in point of fact, it had not) from one of my hands but not from the other, on one side but not the other of a folded piece of paper. The contortions required would defeat even someone a very great deal less arthritic than I, if they would be possible at all. Am I to be expected to stand in a dock or a witness box and wave my two hands in order to demonstrate, both that I had such, and that it caused me intense pain to exert them? Do you imagine that that would add to the majesty of the law, in which some of us simple souls still believe profoundly?

There is no other fingerprint evidence, which is to say that there is no fingerprint evidence whatever. 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. If there is no public interest in prosecuting the father of Poppi Worthington, then there is certainly none in prosecuting me.

You caused all of my dozens of character witnesses to be disallowed, because you knew that the testimony of any one of them would have guaranteed my acquittal: past and present members of both Houses of Parliament, local councillors including several alleged victims in this case, senior members of the Catholic and Anglican clergy, distinguished academics, leading journalists, Justices of the Peace, a Presiding Justice in Court, and so on. 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.

While these proceedings have been ongoing, I have been elected unopposed as a Public Governor of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, 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 your persecution of me. Even so, though, my neighbours voted for me in their hundreds. The verdict of my peers, indeed.

Nevertheless, your political point was made when I failed to be elected to Durham County Council 11 months ago. Not least because the Crown Prosecution Service is hardly in a position to add unnecessarily to its troubles at the moment, I trust that this outrageous waste of public money will now be discontinued. You have less than a week. You have no case. We law-abiding citizens are looking to you to salvage some dignity and credibility. For that sake, the charge against me needs to be dropped immediately.

Yours faithfully,

David Lindsay