Interlude Six
Extract from Robert Pembleton's memoirs, 'A Life in Court', pp 127-128.
...although the question I get asked the most is whether or not I can remember all the faces who've at some stage had to stand before me. Given the impact of the decisions I made, I wish my reply was different, but the truthful answer is that no, I can't.
Don't get me wrong. I can still recall the details of a corruption case involving several local politicians I ruled on back in the seventies. I can vividly remember the day a defendant pledged his innocence lest God strike him down, before immediately dropping dead of a heart attack, and I can still recall the occasion when a police prosecutor arrived for work without any pants. But I first began as a lowly barrister when I was 22, and after sixty years, everything has more of less faded into a blur.
Having said that, there is one moment I'll be able to recall until my final breath. I forget the circumstances of this particular case, but I was forced to let a defendant walk with a suspended sentence. As I made the ruling and glanced around the courtroom, I noticed a boy in the public gallery, sitting beside his family. He could not have been older than ten or eleven, but the look of anger in his brown eyes suggested lifetimes longer. His parents sobbed and held each other in response to the judgment I'd just delivered, but he just sat there, staring right through me with a gaze so intense it chilled me. I could not believe someone so young could hold so much pain inside.
I never learned the boy's name, and I certainly would've remembered had I seen his face again, but I never did. I only hope he forgave me whatever injustice I'd committed, and somewhere within himself, found peace.