Donald Findlay today put us in the endgame of the Craig Whyte fraudco trial, when he decided that the defence would call no witnesses.
Which means we won’t get testimony from Craig Whyte himself.
We won’t get to hear anything from David Murray.
The SFA has probably been spared a hell of a lot of embarrassment – for now – and the trial will be cut short.
Why would Donald Findlay do this?
The answer is surely obvious.
When the defence musters no defence it implies one of two things; 1) that in their opinion the prosecution has abysmally failed to meet the burden of proof or 2) that they did so well cross-examining the prosecutions own witnesses that they believe the state has proved precisely the opposite of what they set out to.
In other words, this appears to be the act of a lawyer supremely confident that he’s secured a result.
There is still a summing up to go; Findlay is excellent at those.
Don’t be at all surprised if it’s a rhetorical masterpiece which leaves most of the prosecution witnesses without a name and casts serious doubt on the professionalism of those who proffered the charges. From the start some have said this was a shoddy investigation; time will tell if it exceeds or meets those expectations.
The burden of proof lies with the state. Whyte didn’t have to get up there and tell his own story, although a lot of us were very much looking forward to what he had to say. No matter. I don’t believe we’ve heard the last of this, or of him.
Whatever the verdict, he will be free to talk to the media or write a book or whatever he wants when it’s done.
If he’s found not guilty, expect a flurry of news articles from him where he may well go the whole hog and tell us where all the bodies are buried. He’s spent a long time as the whipping boy of the media and the Sevco support in relation to the liquidation of the club; if you were in his shoes, wouldn’t you be itching to set the record straight?
There are advantages to doing it in the media instead of in a courtroom; there’s no pesky possibility of a perjury charge if you say the wrong thing.
The trial has adjourned until Thursday.