...................that however bad we claim Jeremy's crime to have been, allegedly, Julie's subsidiary crimes were infinitely worse. Many think -despite that she was nowhere near the soc- she should be where Jeremy now is.
It is claimed that she was an adventress and had Jeremy under her thumb. It's been suggested that it was she who planned their Bonnie and Clyde activities. It's hard to think of anyone whose brain works in such a way putting themselves through the hard graft of years of education requiring that they do menial part time work to fund.
She was more tghan just Jeremy's girlfriend, though. She was his fiancee. He had asked her to marry him, the register office all but booked. I suspect it may have been called off because of parental approval of him "making an honest woman of her". Might that suggest that the engagement had merely been an attempt to get up parental noses? Nonetheless, they were still a couple. As the relationship was ongoing, perhaps the wedding had been put on hold?
I didn't know that about them. Obviously I knew it was a serious relationship, that's common ground, but I didn't realise they had progressed to a consideration of the formalities of marriage.
We're told Jeremy was a psychopath, yet he was able to conduct a serious intimate relationship with a woman who, if you don't mind me making the observation, was a bit on the plain side in the looks department. That said, I think there was an underlying psychological drive on Jeremy's part in the relationship: Julie was a facsimile of June and represented his attempt to appease his mother, who I am sure wanted him to settle down with a 'nice girl' - as all mothers do.
Haven't we all had that conversation with our mothers (and fathers too)? "When are you going to find a nice girl, Chevalier, and settle down?" And haven't we all nagged our own children in the same way, without even realising we're doing it? Some of us can ignore or distance ourselves from the well-intended parental nagging, but Jeremy couldn't because of the situation he was in: he was tied to his parents economically.
We may ask: was Julie a long-term calculation on Jeremy's part, or a genuine love? Maybe the truth is that Jeremy did not understand fully his own motivations. I think it must have been genuine in Jeremy's mind, but with June dead, the underlying psychological picture shifted radically and Jeremy suddenly knew the relationship was over. Thus, the family funeral also marked the end of Jeremy and Julie as a serious relationship. The fooling around in the funeral car perhaps signified this. Instead of being a marriage prospect, Julie became 'just another girl' again.
Despite constant and vociferous reminders about the possibility of a signed, pre-trial contract with the NOTW -although quite how it could have damaged Jeremy's chances is beyond me. She'd made her statement, which would form the basis of her testimony. She, as far as we know, didn't do any unexpected turnarounds from the witness box- and the equally vociferous claims that she lied -if she did, repeating what Jeremy had told her, the lies were his- Julie has never changed her story. No one forced her to come back from Canada, all those years after the event, to give evidence. She can hardly be blamed if it was decided it wasn't necessary to call her.
What, exactly, might she have been guilty of? I suspect she didn't tell the whole truth. I suspect she knew way more of his plans than she admitted to. Possibly the sort of things which she believed may have shown her as complicit? She may even have gone through it with her mother. Might her mother have warned her that if she wasn't careful, she was in danger of being dragged down with Jeremy, who'd already told her that would happen. I'll bet she went for damage limitation.
We really don't need to keep being told that if only the jury had known dah, dah, dah, they'd have voted differently. Would they? A signed, pre-trial contract against the murder of an entire family including two little boys? No contract was signed when that happened, nor did it change who the murderer was.
Here I must disagree with you Jane.
Justice must be paramount and it must be applied to all cases. The principles of a fair trial are fundamental because that's how we find out what happened. If a trial has not been fair, then any conviction that resulted from it must be considered unsafe. We can't pick and choose who the rules apply to and when, just because we're concerned or repulsed by what an individual is accused of.
If Jeremy made a deal with a newspaper, that doesn't matter to justice. This was a contested trial and Jeremy can be expected to deny the allegations anyway. Having a deal in place, which will pay out if indeed he is acquitted, makes no difference to his evidence. Naturally he wants to be acquitted anyway.
On the other hand, if Julie made a deal with a newspaper, that is a serious problem because it means her evidence is coloured by the knowledge she will be paid if a case she is influential in goes a certain way. At the very least, the jury should have been told about this factor. As it is, Julie misled the trial. Why did she do this if, as you claim, it doesn't matter?
I should also add that, in English law, a contract can be verbal or oral as well as written, and informal understandings can be contractual in nature; and, even if it isn't contractual, such an arrangement may still be prejudicial to a criminal trial. If Julie had a verbal understanding with a newspaper, then arguably there was a contract or a 'quasi-contractual' arrangement, but whatever the strict position in law, the bottom line is that she has not told the truth and it is material to her evidence.
Let us say I am sitting as a juror in a criminal trial, and there is a key prosecution witness whose evidence is entirely uncorroborated - in other words, I am being asked to accept the witness' say-so that such-and-such thing happened, in conflict with the denials of the accused. Let us say I then discover that this same witness is going to receive a substantial sum of money if a conviction is secured. I am sorry, but I would disregard the evidence from that witness. It's not safe evidence. Allowing it pollutes the trial and renders the trial unfair and any resulting conviction would be unsafe.
