Irked British Judge Sets Retrial for Ex-Wife of Ex-Official
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Version 0 of 1. LONDON — After nearly 15 hours of jury deliberations over four days, a judge on Wednesday abruptly ordered a retrial for Vicky Pryce, the ex-wife of a former energy minister, who became entangled in a feud with her husband over a decision 10 years ago to accept responsibility for a speeding ticket he incurred on a highway outside London. The judge’s order for a new trial to begin on Monday prolonged, most likely for weeks, what has been one of Britain’s most closely followed criminal cases in years. The controversy assumed a new dimension when the judge, Sir Nigel Sweeney, abruptly dismissed the jury after members failed to reach a majority 10-to-2 verdict, an option the judge granted after the jury reported being deadlocked. In winding up the trial, the judge strongly suggested that the jurors had been incompetent. He said they appeared to have a “fundamental deficit of understanding” about the British justice system, including the role of a trial and a jury, after they plied him with basic questions about the system in the Southwark Crown Court in south London. “In 30 years of criminal trials,” he said, “I have never come across this at this stage, never.” The judge noted that one of 10 questions the jury sent him on Tuesday, after three days of deliberations, sought an explanation of the requirement to prove a defendant’s guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” — an issue the judge said he had already explained in writing, saying that the wording was in plain English and its meaning self-evident. Another question involved a juror’s right to make a decision on the basis of “reasons” not presented in court and not supported by facts or evidence cited by the juror to others in the jury room. Yet another question involved Ms. Pryce’s religion, also unmentioned in court, and whether she could be found not guilty on the presumption of faith-based subservience to her husband. The new trial for the Greek-born Ms. Pryce, 60, meant a further delay for Chris Huhne, her former husband, a multimillionaire investment consultant before entering politics, in learning whether he will go to jail, as Justice Sweeney warned that he might after he pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice, the charge Ms. Pryce also faces. After years of denying that he was the driver, Mr. Huhne, 58, changed his plea as soon as the court sat earlier this month, and simultaneously resigned his parliamentary seat, effectively ending his political career. He had quit as energy minister after the couple were charged last year. Ms. Pryce has admitted to having falsely signed as the driver in the speeding case, saying she did so to spare her husband losing his license after a series of previous speeding convictions. She has coupled this with a defense of “marital coercion,” saying she felt she had “absolutely no choice” after her husband mailed a form to the police naming her as the driver, then harassed her into signing a follow-up summons, something he has denied. With the case hinging on the issue of coercion, evidence roamed freely through intimate aspects of the couple’s 25-year marriage. Ms. Pryce, an economist and mother of five, testified that her husband, citing his need to avoid distractions from his business career, twice pressed her to have abortions, successfully on one occasion. She has also admitted that she teamed up with an editor for The Sunday Times of London in a planned exposé about the ticket swap in revenge for her husband’s leaving her in 2010 for an aide, Carina Trimingham. |