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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=460432" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>0013 The Witness Box</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was a minor court case –<br>a matter of a market trader<br>selling maybe stolen goods, <br>the police attempting, probably not for the first time, <br>to get clear evidence to nail him…</div><div style="margin:10px 0">but for those serving on a jury<br>for the first time, an occasion<br>full of all the solemn majesty of law; <br>the difficulties of following court proceedings; <br>weighing the evidence; and most of all, <br>the fear of convicting an innocent man –<br>even, as visibly here, a slippery man to deal with.<br>The court was small; almost intimate.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">After the grubby, vague, sometimes seemingly irrelevant<br>prosecution claims (points being made that<br>a jury would not appreciate, involving finer points of law) -<br>and, months after the event, <br>policemen reading from notes they took of the case<br>which were as evidence, more like a crime half seen, and<br>half assumed, the accused took the witness stand</div><div style="margin:10px 0">and as he took the last two steps towards the stand<br>I witnessed an extraordinary moment, even with<br>his back to me – for two seconds at the most, you could see<br>the burden of a lifetime's criminality fall from his shoulders; <br>in this moment of pure, beautiful grace: <br>something within him knew that this was the given moment<br>to ‘come clean’ once and forever…</div><div style="margin:10px 0">before me stood, for a single glimpse, <br>the human being in primal innocence.<br>So when he took the witness stand<br>and declared himself not guilty<br>at was, at one level, manifestly true..</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He took the stand; swore on the holy book<br>to tell the truth, the whole truth, <br>and nothing but the truth; <br>and lied and lied and lied – so obviously, <br>that to my astonishment, the judge intervened, <br>leaned over to him and said in almost motherly tones, <br>‘Mr Smith – why is it that whenever you are asked<br>a question.. you tell..a lie? ’…</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the courtroom, a breathless pause; <br>(the defence lawyers can’t have been too pleased<br>to hear this condemnation by implication) : </div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘It’s me nature, ma’am’ was the sincere and miserable reply..</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The police failed to convince us of his guilt – although<br>we quessed they’d been after him for some time; <br>we let him off; but in that moment which was unforgettable, <br>I’d seen innocence and guilt within one man.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Michael+Shepherd">Michael Shepherd</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=460432" data-title="0013 The Witness Box de Michael Shepherd" data-description="It was a minor court case –
a matter of a market trader
selling maybe stolen goods, 
the police attempting, probably not for the first time, 
to get clear evidence to nail him…

but for those serving on a jury
for the first time, an occasion
f..."></div>
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