BOOK EXTRACT: The Dwarf Who Moved Part 2/2

Knighted in the 2015 New Year honours, Sir Peter Williams is one of the country’s best-known criminal lawyers and a campaigner for prison reform. He has appeared in more than 100 murder trials in a 60-year career, including the Arthur Allan Thomas case and the Basset Rd machine gun killings. He also represented drug syndicate leader Terry (“Mr Asia”) and has long campaigned for penal reform. In the final of two extracts from The Dwarf Who Moved he recalls:

The Exotic Stripper Whom the Judge Found Appealing

I was sitting in my office when my secretary came in and said, ‘There’s a young lady to see you. Shall I bring her in?’

When Sante sat down opposite me, I couldn’t help but notice that she was very attractive, distractingly so.
Sante told me that she had been dancing at a well-known nightclub when, suddenly, a few men and women rose from the audience, yelling out, ‘Police! Police!’ There was general pandemonium. She was arrested by women police officers, taken backstage and told to get dressed. At the police station, she was charged with indecency and refused police bail.

She told me she’d never had such a terrible night in all her life as the one she spent in the police cells and was relying on me to help her.

I must say that I remained very conscious of her beauty throughout, but somehow maintained my professionalism; I called in my secretary and took a statement.

What Sante told me essentially was that she had been performing her usual dance routine and at the high point of her performance she had shed her clothes. She said that she was not completely naked, however, because she had been still wearing a small piece of black, triangular-shaped cloth that she had glued across her private parts. She said this was always her practice in case anyone accused her of indecency.

We elected trial by jury and, in due course, the case was heard in the Auckland Supreme Court before an all-male jury and Justice Reginald Hardie Boys, a short, bespectacled man, who was renowned as being pretty tough on crime. Justice Hardie Boys had conducted, when at the bar, many high profile trials, and was regarded as a highly skilled and very confident judge.

I was greatly assisted in the preparation of this case by a university lecturer, Bernie Brown, who later became an Associate Professor at the University of Auckland Law School.

Bernie and I had worked together on many cases. In those days, he was something of a night owl and I would often call at his home at breakfast time to pick up his written opinions.

These documents sometimes showed evidence that they were prepared in some late-night supper club. Bernie was one of the great lawyers of Auckland: modest, poetic and always a gentleman – and he still is, as one might guess from his generous foreword to this book.

Juries in those days were often unpredictable, though. I suppose they still are. There had been a sensational case in England, where celebrity osteopath Stephen Ward had been charged with living on the earnings of prostitutes. He was something of a hippie and an eccentric, but had eminent clients in London, including Lord Astor. One of his alleged prostitutes was Christine Keeler, who was the mistress of a Soviet diplomat; and as well, most famously, her relationship with John Profumo, then Secretary of State for War in the Harold McMillan government, had caused his resignation.

The evidence against Stephen Ward included that he was sometimes seen walking around Soho with two or three of his young bimbo girlfriends, each wearing dog collars attached to leads. This trial caused enormous publicity around the world.The trial judge was very conservative, and did the extraordinary and unforgivable by allowing the jury to bring back a verdict after he knew that Ward had attempted suicide.

To his everlasting ignominy, the judge, on learning Ward had attempted suicide and was in a coma, refused to adjourn the trial to see whether Ward was well enough to attend. Ward’s bail was withdrawn, and he was put under police surveillance in a hospital. The judge, in Ward’s absence, continued his summing up, and sent the jury out to consider their verdict. The jury had been informed of Ward’s suicide bid. However, they returned with a verdict of guilty. Geoffrey Robertson QC, in his book Stephen Ward was Innocent, OK, described the judge’s actions to be ‘a final act of unfairness, to try a dying man’.  

There were similar dangers of sanctimonious prejudice in the trial of Sante Collins. There was a possibility that some of the jurors might be conservative bigots and therefore the defence had to be conducted carefully and sensitively.

 At the trial, Sante Collins appeared in the dock primly dressed. It could not be denied, however, that she exuded her Delilah-like charm.

The prosecutor, in his address to the jury, warned them about being sympathetic towards Sante. He said that the public must be protected from performances that could well corrupt the morals of our nation. Regardless of the fact that the nightclub had been poorly lit, all the Vice Squad witnesses uniformly deposed that Sante Collins had been completely naked, and that they could see, during the performance her pubic hair.

I tried to conduct the defence with dignity and restraint. The prosecutor, however, seemed to be obsessed with obtaining a guilty verdict and, in my opinion, went well beyond the constraints of prosecutorial conduct with his histrionics and emotional pleas for a conviction.

However, before the jury retired, a crucial development occurred during the trial. The judge said that he wished to see counsel in his chambers, in the absence of the defendant. That was not uncommon in those days, and so we all trooped into his private room. After we had been seated, the judge lit up a cigarette and asked whether any of us wanted to smoke. He seemed very relaxed and not at all indifferent to the defence; indeed he seemed in a  somewhat humorous mood, with a kindly expression on his face.

Then the judge said to the prosecutor, ‘Do you find the accused an attractive woman?’ The prosecutor was taken aback by this question, and obviously became very uncomfortable. The judge then added, ‘To be perfectly frank, gentlemen, I find the accused to be a beautiful young lady and, quite truthfully, I can’t imagine her doing anything during an artistic dance that a reasonable person would consider indecent.

The prosecutor had become pale and started to stammer some sort of protestation which was virtually incomprehensible.

The judge then started laughing and, knowing the rule was that it was always safe to laugh when the judge laughs, I began to chuckle myself.

The judge by now had lit a pipe, and was sitting back, obviously enjoying the prosecutor’s discomfort, while puffing blue smoke into the air. I enjoyed the aroma.

Finally, the judge said, ‘Unless anyone has anything further to say, I intend, when I go back into court, to discharge the accused. I believe it’s too dangerous to leave this case for the
jury. There could be prejudice and a miscarriage of justice might occur.’

We stood up and bowed, leaving the room and walking back to the courtroom.

The Vice Squad members rushed to confer with the prosecutor and their chagrin was obvious.

The jury were reassembled and the judge gave them a quiet, unassuming explanation, followed by an order that Sante Collins be discharged and that she should leave the dock without a blemish to her good character.

Her many supporters in the back of the court could not restrain their approval and the Vice Squad members were left muttering and very dissatisfied. I believe that justice was well served, and that the boundaries of freedom of expression were extended that day. Today, hopefully, no prosecution would ever be entertained in similar circumstances.   

I might add that before we left the judge’s chambers, the prosecutor had informed the judge that if he directed an acquittal, the prosecution would take the case to the Court of Appeal.

The judge had sat back and laughed at this, saying, ‘Well, Mr Prosecutor, would you allow Sante to dance before the Court of Appeal? They might appreciate that.’ And he laughed even more loudly.

© The Dwarf Who Moved, by Peter Williams. Published by HarperCollins New Zealand. Reprinted with permission