Inside the painstaking delays and disruption of Constance Marten’s trial
The two expensive trials, which were fed with attentive delays, were a defendant who examined his own partner through the dock and the most senior judge – Constance Marten and Mark Gordon, who started the sabotage charges of former Bailey.
The case was already an extraordinary situation before reaching the courtroom: an aristocrat who continued to escape and started to camp with the rapist partner and babies in 2023 winter.
A high -profile police called the trio and resulted in a shocking discovery of Victoria, who was buried under the trash in a shopping bag in an abandoned Brighton hut.
However, it took two and a half years to deliver the couple to justice.
Even the access of a decision can be defined as a miracle aside from all charges. The couple, who were dedicated to each other and united for years behind the bars, did not excessively trust the authorities who put them in a collision course in the courtroom. It was said that they spoke over and over again because they were determined to publish their essays for a long time as possible.
The first hearing that began in January 2024 endured a series of annoying delay and lasted six months instead of two people planned before collapsing. Last year, the parents were found guilty of child persecution, hiding the body and hiding the birth of a child, he misled the course of justice, but the jury was discharged after not making a decision on the accusation of manslaughter.
Nine months later, in March of this year, the six -month re -trial began. He was struggling with more deterioration and was re -exhausted again, and seemed to be swinging on the edge of the collapse often.
When Marten blurred the jury of Gordon’s violent rape conviction, the prosecution questioned whether the shift had attempt to sabotage the trials.
Even at some point, President Judge Mark Lucraft KC claimed that the defendants were trying to “sabotage” or “rail”. At another stage, a clearly bored judge, who was sitting as a recorder of London, told Lucraft Marten: “Now I have been sitting as a full -time judge for thirteen years and I haven’t been shown to me by anyone.” At the beginning of that day, the two young people on the quay acted quite better and guilty of murder ”he added. When Marten Taç refused to see the psychiatrist, he said, “My patience for him has been tried many times.”
Marten complained about toothache and fatigue from his three -hour journey from Surrey prison, where he was held, and the court disappeared for days. However, when the judge adjusts to see a dentist, he refused treatment.
Both parents gave evidence in their defense, but refused to be crossed by the prosecution, branded Joel Smith Kc from the Marten Crown as “evil” and “heartless, and asked if Victoria had left in a bag full of garbage. After the tense change, he refused to return to the witness box.
When the jury retired to take into account their decisions, both Marten and Gordon gave up their chief lawyers. In the last two years, Marten, who has passed through a series of upper silk, chose to allow his young lawyer to continue on his behalf, while Gordon insisted that he would represent himself in the second half of his trial, although he received judicial assistance at the first hearing at the first hearing.
The strange return of the events saw his wife and the common defendant studying and read a list of questions from a microphone through the dock.
In his closing speech to the jury, he triggered more delays for extra time to prepare at every opportunity before saying that they were “out of humanity” and “worsening”.
When the tactic drew a positive picture of his upbringing, when the prosecution succeeded him to apply to promote the so -called “bad character” evidence against him, he caused him to learn all the details of the rape conviction in the United States, where the jury was imprisoned for two years.
Gordon never even gave evidence at the first hearing, he changed his mind to do it without explaining it. However, Marten was on the dock for days.
Although he started his testimony with a request for toilet breaks, the center of the first attempt has become a very fantastic and delusional account of both reasonable and heart, which consists of both reasonable and heart.
Speaking of Marten, at the second hearing, prosecution, “the lies fall out of the mouth, we recommend and always we have always done as a confetti floating in the wind,” he said.
They accused the jury of Victoria for “what questions and choosing” because they told Victoria that she had never given a chance ”.
Marten and Gordon will be sentenced at a time to be determined.
