Devil's advocate Michael Turner prepares for his toughest case
The QC could find himself leading fellow lawyers on strike over Legal Aid plans
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Michael Turner QC: What if he realises halfway through a trial that his client is evil? “Whether I think my client is an evil individual or not is neither here nor there” Photo: PAUL GROVER
7:00AM GMT 02 Dec 2012
If you ever find yourself accused of murder, covered in blood and holding a smoking gun, Michael Turner is the man to call. “If you say you didn’t do it, the gun was planted and it’s a stitch-up, then fine,” says this leading defence lawyer. “You want me to believe you – or at least appear to – and put that case with passion.”
He’s very good at that. Michael Turner QC is a proper devil’s advocate, a champion of apparently lost causes, from alleged multiple murderers to parents accused of shaking their babies to death. He has a reputation as “a barrister who can secure results no others could”, notably gaining freedom after 18 years for a man falsely convicted of killing the 13-year-old paper boy Carl Bridgewater.
“It is incredibly important that if the state accuses one of its citizens of a crime, they are properly represented,” he says. “I have done enough injustice cases to know that the system can get it dreadfully wrong.”
But he has also represented the likes of Jeremy Bamber, who on Thursday lost his latest appeal against a whole-term life sentence for the murder of five relatives. So what is it like to stand up in court and plead the case for a killer?
“Everybody asks me that,” says this expert cross-examiner, looking sternly over the top of his half-moon glasses. “The answer is that you don’t know if someone’s guilty. You take instructions from your client. You think: 'Oh no, this sounds really unlikely.’ Then you test it and find out that what he says might actually be true. A jury might believe him. So you give it everything you’ve got.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9716069/Devils-advocate-Michael-Turner-prepares-for-his-toughest-case.html
'Who is Jeremy Bamber?' by Matt Wall http://www.jeremy-bamber.co.uk/who-is-jeremy
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9716069/Devils-advocate-Michael-Turner-prepares-for-his-toughest-case.html
'Who is Jeremy Bamber?' by Matt Wall http://www.jeremy-bamber.co.uk/who-is-jeremy
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