Anna Tregorran is making heavy weather of defending Helen Titchener in The Archers Trial

Half the country was glued to their radios on Sunday night for the first day in the Archers Trial.

Prosecution counsel’s opening was suave and persuasive, whilst being perfectly fair – Julian Bywater correctly stressed, for example, that it was for the prosecution to disprove self-defence not for the defence to prove it.

Listeners were more concerned to see how Helen’s barrister, the troubled and intermittently drink-sodden Anna Tregorran, would rise to the occasion.

In preparing for the trial of the century over the past few months Miss Tregorran has certainly not been lacking in commitment: she has visited her client in prison innumerable times (for almost all of which she won’t be paid a penny).

On the other hand she has been remarkably unsuccessful on the two occasions when she actually appeared in court. She made an inexplicably unsuccessful bail application which has led to Helen spending the last 5 months in custody; and her performance in the family court was so lamentable that she was lucky not to be reported to the Bar Standards Board for conducting a case without the appropriate knowledge and expertise. Continue reading “Anna Tregorran is making heavy weather of defending Helen Titchener in The Archers Trial”

Is Helen guilty of murdering Rob? My Advice

R v. Helen Titchener

ADVICE

1. I have been asked to advise those instructing urgently in relation to their client Helen Titchener, who has been arrested on suspicion of a serious crime of violence against her husband, Robert. At the time of writing matters are still a little unclear, but Mrs Titchener believes she has killed her husband by stabbing him with a kitchen knife. It seems likely, though not certain, that he will have been certified dead on arrival at Borchester Hospital. Those instructing expect to be representing Mrs Titchener in the police station where she is expected to be interviewed sometime after 19.00 hours this evening.

2. Because this advice is required so urgently I will not trouble those instructing with a detailed recital of what I have been told is the unhappy history of the Titcheners’ relationship. It suffices to say that in recent months their marriage had become increasingly strained and (at any rate as far as Mrs Titchener was concerned) unhappy. Mrs Titchener is heavily pregnant, and it seems that this has been used by Mr Titchener as a means of exerting ever increasing emotional control over her. Indeed, such had been the level of control that she had even, at times, begun to doubt her own sanity, and had recently sought treatment from a psychiatrist. Continue reading “Is Helen guilty of murdering Rob? My Advice”