Keeping up appearances part 2
Sometimes an appearance that might be considered helpful can actually prove to be exactly the contrary.
I once represented a defendant who was charged with assault. He had been approached by two men, who as it happened were off-duty police officers, but he did not know that. The misunderstanding led to him flattening both of them. His (not unreasonable) stance was that if two men you didn't know walked up to you outside a nightclub and started off by saying "look here" and reaching towards you, if you didn't know that they were in fact police officers you would assume they were about to have a go at you and act accordingly.
The jury did not accept this explanation as justifying his conduct, even though there was very little difference between the evidence of the two police officers and that of the defendant. I felt that ultimately what cost him was an appearance problem. Not in what he was wearing, but how he behaved. He had hurt his leg playing football the week before. There was no doubt the genuinely hurt it, but plainly he thought the sympathy vote was worth having. He took an eternity to get from the dock to the witness box as he limped along, and an eternity to get back after he had given his evidence. The problem was that his limp was on his left leg going into the box, and on his right leg coming out. When you take as long as he did get to and from the witness box that looked pretty obvious and in fact as he walked on the return journey there were suppressed titters in the court room which showed that everyone was aware of what he was doing.
I had commented in previous QC blogs in this series about appearances that one thing which is most unhelpful about appearance is if the jury ever gets the impression that you are pretending to be something that you're not. Then you really have a problem.
In a civil case (I was acting for a local council taking proceedings against a property owner who was alleged to be letting premises which were not fit for human habitation) I once went on a site visit to a property. The judge went also, as did the defendant, who was presenting his case in person. As it happens I was wearing an identical pinstripe suit to that worn by the judge. The defendant announced that this was "sinister". He felt there were obvious inferences to be drawn from the similarity, although unfortunately he would not say what he thought they were. He eventually backed down on the subject. There are various outfits that I would have thought be categorised as sinister, but the pinstripe suit does not immediately spring to mind as one of them.
Appearances may be interesting in civil cases in the New Year. The Lord Chief Justice has announced that in January 2008 judges will stop wearing wigs in civil cases, and they will move to wearing a new outfit, probably a continental style robe. At the time he suggested that he expected that advocates would adopt a similar dress code to that of the judge. That is not what has happened. A survey of barristers showed that they were overwhelmingly in favour of retaining traditional use of wig and gown in the High Court. There should be some interesting sights early in the New Year, and ones of contrasting appearances.