Page 192 - the-trial

in continuous personal contact with the court, especially
those helping him. I repeat, this doesn’t require so much ef-
fort as getting an apparent acquittal, but it probably requires
a lot more attention. You must never let the trial out of your
sight, you have to go and see the appropriate judge at regu-
lar intervals as well as when something in particular comes
up and, whatever you do, you have to try and remain friend-
ly with him; if you don’t know the judge personally you have
to influence him through the judges you do know, and you
have to do it without giving up on the direct discussions. As
long as you don’t fail to do any of these things you can be
reasonably sure the trial won’t get past its first stages. The
trial doesn’t stop, but the defendant is almost as certain of
avoiding conviction as if he’d been acquitted. Compared
with an apparent acquittal, deferment has the advantage
that the defendant’s future is less uncertain, he’s safe from
the shock of being suddenly re-arrested and doesn’t need to
fear the exertions and stress involved in getting an apparent
acquittal just when everything else in his life would make it
most difficult. Deferment does have certain disadvantages
of its own though, too, and they shouldn’t be under-esti-
mated. I don’t mean by this that the defendant is never free,
he’s never free in the proper sense of the word with an ap-
parent acquittal either. There’s another disadvantage.
Proceedings can’t be prevented from moving forward un-
less there are some at least ostensible reasons given. So
something needs to seem to be happening when looked at
from the outside. This means that from time to time various
injunctions have to be obeyed, the accused has to be ques-

1 1