‘Confession letter’ case thrown out

Wednesday 12 February 2020

The trial of an elderly man accused of perverting the course of justice by trying to get a vulnerable man to sign a 'confession' letter has fallen apart, with the Royal Court ruling a jury “could not properly convict” based on the evidence before them.

As the trial of Charles David Barnett (74) reached its halfway point this morning, Commissioner Julian Clyde-Smith invited the jury to acquit the convicted sex offender of the new allegation against him.

Mr Barnett had admitted attempting to get a vulnerable islander to 'confess' to crimes relating to indecent images he himself was imprisoned for in 2015 by asking a friend to deliver a letter to the individual and asking him to sign it.

Led by Crown Advocate Richard Pedley, the prosecution alleged that Mr Barnett's actions whilst he was a serving prisoner at La Moye constituted an attempt to pervert the course of justice and could have led to the wrongful conviction of the vulnerable individual.

Pictured: The allegations centred on actions Mr Barnett took whilst he was a serving prisoner at La Moye.

However, Mr Barnett argued that this was the only way he felt he could clear his name for the crimes he maintains he didn't commit.

Over the first day-and-a-half of evidence, the jury of seven men and five women heard from several witnesses including the man who was given the letter by Mr Barnett and two senior police officers.

However, at the close of the prosecution case yesterday morning, Mr Barnett’s lawyer Advocate David Steenson applied to have the case thrown out, blasting the way the Crown had presented its case as “a legal farce”.

Making his application to Royal Court Commissioner Julian Clyde-Smith, Advocate Steenson urged: “If there’s ever a case for a judge to end a prosecution it is this one… [and] I don’t say that lightly." 

Mr Barnett has always protested his innocence – both in his original trial and at this one – and he claimed during his Police interview: “I didn’t try to pervert the course of justice, I tried to bring someone to justice.”

Pictured: Advocate David Steenson represented Mr Barnett.

Making his application to halt the prosecution, Advocate Steenson claimed that the Crown’s case had “been in disarray from the outset of this trial” and he emphasised that the logic of the prosecution was “circular”.

He explained that if the prosecution considered his client to be “guilty of the original offence” then “any attempt to persuade anyone otherwise constitutes a perversion of the course of justice".

He continued by saying that the prosecution counsel had failed to prove that Mr Barnett’s act of sending the ‘confession letter’ to his associate even had the potential to manipulate or derail any criminal investigation when the letter never even reached the person it was intended for. 

Advocate Steenson questioned what the prosecution’s approach would be if the addressee of the ‘confession letter’ didn’t have severe cognitive impairment and was rather a man in “rude mental health”. 

Responding to Advocate Steenson, Crown Advocate Pedley took the Court through the legal criteria for throwing out a prosecution at this point in a trial. He claimed that this “is a test based on evidence” and not one based on “hypothetical situations”. 

Pictured: The prosecution was today dropped in the Royal Court.

“Introducing questions as to ‘What if?’ takes us nowhere,” the prosecutor argued, maintaining that the Crown’s evidence was “neither weak, vague, nor inconsistent".

He argued that Mr Barnett had simply “deluded himself” into thinking he was innocent of the original offences and that “he is simply incorrect in asserting that [the other individual] had anything to do with” the indecent images. 

Commissioner Clyde-Smith this morning made his decision that, although the prosecution had presented some evidence that the act had the possibility to pervert the course of justice, this would still not be enough for a jury to convict him.

The judge decided that because Mr Barnett’s letter only “constitutes an invitation to [the other person] to confess”, and that there was no “pressure placed or inducement to do so”, he found that there was no case for Mr Barnett to answer to.

The jury was then discharged and the prosecution dropped.

Speaking to Express after the Court's decision, Mr Barnett said: "I had a good lawyer who was very, very thorough and worked very hard with his assistant and I'm glad the Court found as it did."

The Law Officers' Department said that they would not be commenting at this time.