Until 2022 it was over 60 years since a silk had been suspended for withholding evidence favourable to the defence. It was after Meek v Fleming that in 1961 Victor Durand QC, perhaps the best criminal defence advocate of his time, was stood down for three years, reduced on appeal to one.
Alan Meek, the plaintiff, was a press photographer taking pictures of a disturbance on Guy Fawkes night 1958 when he was arrested for obstructing the police in Trafalgar Square. He then claimed damages for unlawful imprisonment and assault against Richard Fleming, the officer in charge of his arrest.
Appearing for Fleming, Durand had his client appear in civvies and referred to him as inspector or chief inspector, as did the judge. All the police witnesses referred to him as ‘mister’. In his closing speech, Durand stressed the importance of his client’s character, comparing this upstanding man with the murky depths of Fleet Street. Unsurprisingly, given the times, the jury found in favour of Fleming.
What Durand did not disclose was that in December 1959 Fleming had been convicted by a disciplinary board over the arrest of a bookmaker. He was reduced to the rank of station sergeant. Off to the Court of Appeal went Meek, and Durand owned up that the concealment had been his idea. Durand fought valiantly to have the finding in favour of Fleming upheld, arguing it didn’t really matter. A number of other officers supported Fleming. The Court of Appeal finally ordered a new trial in June 1961 and eventually the matter was settled out of court.
Durand’s practice did not suffer. He continued defending high-profile murder cases, generally for high fees. I instructed him on a number of occasions but, possibly because my clients’ cases were meritless, he never obtained a result such as he did in the 1960 Pen Club murder trial when, in the teeth of the evidence, James Nash was found not guilty of killing a man in a fight. Later, Commander Bert Wickstead, not a noted lover of defence counsel, wrote: ‘It surpassed anything I have ever heard before or since. It was brilliant spell-binding stuff.’
James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor
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