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Daily Mail
May 2, 2014
A former judge is facing jail after she was found guilty of lying to police investigating the Chris Huhne speeding points scandal.
Constance Briscoe was accused of trying to pervert the course of justice in connection with the investigation into how disgraced cabinet minister Mr Huhne passed speeding points to his then-wife Vicky Pryce a decade ago.
She was found to have lied to police by claiming she was an ‘impartial witness’ in the case, when in fact she was closely allied to Ms Pryce.
Briscoe, 56, who has been suspended since her arrest in October 2012, denied three counts of intending to pervert the course of public justice.
She made no reaction in the dock as the jury at the Old Bailey found her guilty after deliberating for around five hours.
Barrister and former part-time judge Briscoe, dressed all in black in the dock, stood impassively as the jury gave its verdicts.
Sentencing will take place tomorrow at the Old Bailey and Briscoe remains on bail, but judge Mr Justice Baker warned her: ‘It’s almost inevitable there will be a custodial sentence.’
Jurors were told that Briscoe helped economist Ms Pryce, who was a friend and also her neighbour, to reveal information about Mr Huhne’s points-swapping to newspapers after the couple split in 2010.
The scandal led to Mr Huhne’s resignation and subsequent prosecution. He pleaded guilty in February last year, while Ms Pryce was convicted after a trial. Both have now served jail sentences.
When the allegations emerged in 2011, Briscoe made a witness statement to police in May that year claiming Ms Pryce confided in her in 2003 after she found out that Mr Huhne had asked her to take his speeding points, portraying herself as an ‘independent and objective’ witness.
In a second statement in August 2012 she denied having any contact with journalists or newspapers about the story but emails obtained by court order ahead of the Huhne-Pryce trial showed that Briscoe had spoken to journalists.
Once her involvement was revealed, Briscoe was dropped as a witness in Huhne and Pryce’s trial and she was arrested in October 2012.
The jury has heard that Briscoe – a barrister with many years’ experience – was intent on bringing about Mr Huhne’s downfall and knew how to manipulate the criminal justice system to her advantage.
Briscoe was found guilty on three counts. The first charge alleged that, between May 2011 and October 2012, Briscoe provided police with two inaccurate statements, and the second that on October 2012 she produced an altered copy of a statement but claimed it was the correct version.
A third charge alleged that between October 5 2012 and October 8 last year she deliberately got a document expert to view the wrong version of her witness statement.
Briscoe stood trial at London’s Southwark Crown Court in January but a jury failed to reach verdicts on any of the counts. A re-trial was ordered, which has been heard at the Old Bailey.
Mr Huhne hailed the verdict. In a statement, he said: ‘Constance Briscoe has been revealed as a compulsive and self-publicising fantasist.
‘If I had not forced the disclosure that was then used to convict Briscoe, she would never have been brought to justice.
‘British justice is likely to be a lot fairer with Briscoe behind bars. If she can make up the witness statements used as the key evidence against me, she is clearly capable of hiding evidence she should have disclosed to the defence in the many cases that she prosecuted for the Crown Prosecution Service.
‘There is also an issue for the bar and the judiciary… the Bar, the Crown Prosecution Service and the judiciary went on entrusting her with responsibility for people’s lives because they were not prepared to blow the whistle on one of their own.’
Even Briscoe’s own mother welcome the jury’s decision, saying:’If you do the crime you’ve to pay for it.’
Speaking outside the Old Bailey,Briscoe’s elderly mother Carmen, with whom she fought a high-profile libel battle, said: ‘There’s nothing happy about it. There’s nothing sad about it.
‘If you do the crime you’ve to pay for it.’
She said she was feeling tired and was ‘sleeping’ when the verdicts were announced and added she now plans to get her libel case against her daughter overturned, commenting: ‘I’ve got that in action.’
Kent Police senior investigating officer Detective Inspector John McDermott said the verdict showed no-one was ‘above the law’.
He said: ‘In her roles as a Recorder Judge and as a barrister, if anyone should understand the importance of preserving public justice it should be Constance Briscoe.
‘In failing to co-operate with police, she very nearly had a detrimental impact on the convictions of two other people in relation to a historic speeding offence.
