JUDGE FURIOUS AS 'WITNESS NOBBLING' CHARGES AGAINST OTIS FERRY ARE DROPPED

THE TIMES

Otis Ferry was told yesterday that witness-nobbling charges, for which he had already spent four months in jail, were likely to be dropped in what a judge described as a “farcical” development.

Mr Ferry, the son of Bryan Ferry of the rock group Roxy Music, had been remanded in custody to stand trial on charges of robbing a hunt monitor, assault and perverting the course of justice by interfering with a witness.

But yesterday, the 26-year-old joint master of the South Shropshire hunt learnt at Gloucester Crown Court that the latter charge was likely to be abandoned over “inconsistencies”.

Martin Picton, the judge, described the situation as “nonsensical and farcical”. He had abandoned the original robbery and assault trial in September and remanded Mr Ferry in custody – upon pressure from the Crown Prosecution Service – after hearing the perverting the course of justice allegation. The judge called for Kerry Barker, the prosecution lawyer, who was not in court, to appear before him to give a full explanation.

Mr Ferry and John Deutsch, 55, of Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, were charged jointly with robbing Helen Ghalmi, a hunt monitor, of a camera and assaulting her during a meeting of the Heythrop Hunt near Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, in November 2007. They also face alternative charges of affray.

Mr Ferry had also been accused of perverting the course of justice by telling his former groom, David Hodgkiss, not to give evidence against him when Mr Ferry was due to stand trial at Cirencester Crown Court. That trial was aborted when the witness-nobbling allegations were made.

Police investigating this allegation then arrested three other people, including Mr Ferry’s girlfriend, Francesca Nimmo, and Adrian Simpson, the Welsh director of the Countryside Alliance, on suspicion of perverting the course of justice. They remain on police bail.

At yesterday’s hearing Stephen Dent, prosecuting, said: “There has been a lot of painstaking police work carried out as far as the perverting the course of justice charges are concerned and it has been looked at very carefully. Those inquiries reveal a number of inconsistencies which mean that the Crown at the moment offers no evidence on that count.” But Judge Picton said: “At some point I shall want rather more than this by way of explanation because I remanded Mr Ferry in custody for over four months on the basis that there was a perverting the course of justice charge being pursued. There were vigorous objections to bail raised on the grounds of that.”

The prosecution still intends to call Mr Hodgkiss to give evidence in the robbery trial, despite the apparent inconsistencies in his account of the alleged witness-nobbling, though Judge Picton questioned how the defence could understand which parts of Mr Hodgkiss’s evidence were considered true and which not. Annie Johnston, for Mr Ferry, said she had understood that the Crown would formally offer no evidence against him on the perverting the course of justice charge. In fact, she said, Mr Ferry had even been asked by the prosecution if he would be prepared to give evidence against Mr Hodgkiss should he instead be charged with perverting justice.

Judge Picton said he found it breathtaking that the prosecution had reached its present situation after the case had been “vegetating a long time”.Bailing Mr Ferry and Mr Deutsch, he told them: “I am adjourning your case. I can’t tell you until when.”

Read More Here