ABSTRACT
Well, while the jury was out I was taken into a big room at the back of the court; very bare, gloomy, dark panelling walls, an enormous round table in the middle, and some like high-backed dining chairs round it. We just sat there, me and the prison officer who’d been behind me in the dock, keeping an eye on me during the trial, we just sat there and chatted a bit. Not saying much, you know, just sitting and smoking-well, I didn’t smoke, I don’t smoke, but he did, he was more or less smoking all the time. The only thing we talked about that I remember was the, you know, the length of time it was taking the jury to arrive at a verdict. It seemed to be dragging on but then the door opened and someone said ‘They’re coming back’, so back we went in the court. But they hadn’t come back to give a verdict, they’d only come in because they’d got some query they wanted further direction on from the judge. It was about how they ought to look at Lawson’s evidence, some point about that, and the judge dealt with it and then we had to go back in the big room again and sit and wait.
