Tales from the Courtroom

Court-room dramas hold an endless fascination, but they are often a pale shadow of the real thing. Consider for example the case of the young man who, after being acquitted of his girlfriend's murder, was challenged by the dead girl's brother in a procedure which had not been used since the middle ages. It failed, but the facts of the case were recalled over a century later by another tragedy, which eerily mirrored them. Or the case of the vicar's son convicted of cattle mutilation who was ...