These Things Are Sent To Try Us

The third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin at Durham Crown Court mere hours from now, most of them to be spent asleep, at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, Monday 1st April 2019. Despite supposedly being an open and shut case, it has been allocated “seven days plus”. 

On 13th March 2017, in order to frighten me out of seeking election to Durham County Council, I was arrested for sending a death threat to a large number of members of that authority. On 13th April, to the shocked disbelief of the Police and after six or seven hours on the part of the Crown Prosecution Service, I was charged. The Police maintain to this day that they would not have charged me. I have never been charged with threats to kill, only with malicious communication.

The powers that be held my First Hearing somewhere that they assumed that I would be unable to reach on time by the public transport on which my disability made me dependent. But I was there. They sent me for an unrequested psychiatric assessment with a view to having me committed. But I was pronounced to have no mental health issues whatever.

I was supposed to stand trial on 6th December. It was “postponed”. I was supposed to stand trial on 11th April 2018, a year after I had been charged. That, too, was “postponed”. I am now due to stand trial two years after I was charged.

To deal with the johnny-come-lately charge of attempting (not conspiracy) to pervert the course of justice, which is the recently invented excuse for having prolonged this rubbish, it depends on an electronic correspondence that simply does not exist at all.

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. 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 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.

So there is in fact no fingerprint evidence. There is no computer evidence. There is no electronic evidence of any kind. 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.

The CPS caused all of my dozens of character witnesses to be disallowed, because it 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. 

As a matter of record, every member of Durham County Council believes that this offence never took place; that it simply never happened. 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, who, entirely by his own choice, both remains my friend on Facebook, and continues to follow me on Twitter. 

If there is no public interest in prosecuting the father of Poppi Worthington, then there is certainly none in prosecuting me. If there is no public interest in prosecuting the people who do not deny the overspending that made the difference between a hung Parliament and a Conservative overall majority in 2015, then there is certainly none in prosecuting me. If there is no public interest in prosecuting the Duke of Edinburgh for breaking a woman’s arm and for endangering the life of a baby, then there is certainly none in prosecuting me.

In 2007, the CPS claimed to have insufficient evidence to charge Tony Blair with selling peerages, even though he had done everything short of advertise them in Exchange and Mart. As a matter of policy, no one in County Durham is arrested, still less charged, with anything relating to the law against cannabis.

No one in this country would run much risk of arrest, never mind charge, never mind conviction, never mind anything more than the most derisory sentence, for what has long been the illegal activity of foxhunting, to which the Police act as escorts, arresting only anyone who might seek to obstruct this criminality or to object to it.

No one other than a Premier League footballer, and even then probably only one from the “wrong” club, would run any risk of arrest or prosecution for the “digital penetration” of a 15-year-old girl who had, furthermore, been out drinking with the complete impunity of everyone from her parents to the relevant licensees. No one other than a minister of religion, or possibly a teacher, would run any risk of arrest or prosecution for any kind of sexual activity with a 15-year-old boy.

And so on.

Nevertheless, 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 the persecution of me. Even so, though, my neighbours voted for me in their hundreds. The verdict of my peers, indeed.

Onwards, then, to the even greater verdict of my peers, namely my election as the Member of Parliament for North West Durham. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.