The Islanders

to him in demotic, but that he had difficulty in expressing himself. We also know, from the same school records, that Sington was illiterate in demotic when he left school. There is absolutely no evidence or commonsense chance that Sington learned to read and write after leaving school.

The language he spoke was the patois of urban Cheoner. We have evidence of this from school records. Patois is of course street vernacular. Patois is purely oral, with no written tradition.

The confession Sington allegedly made to the policier officer could not have been written down in patois. If Sington spoke in patois, then it must have been the recording that was later interpreted or translated by one or other of the policier officers, and written down in demotic. Yet the confession which was admitted to the trial was presented as his own evidence, dictated from his own lips and faithfully transcribed. The confession contributed greatly to his conviction.

Several observations can therefore be made about his allegedly written confession, all of which give rise to juridical anxiety.

In the first place, the confession was obtained by interview with two policier officers, at least one of whom, unknown to Sington, had already been involved in the search for Commis’s killers as well as investigating the ship collision. We know that a recording of the interview was made, and then transcribed in some fashion, presumably by ‘Serjeant A’. Was it then read to Sington aloud? In the demotic which he barely understood?

Sentences in the confession which begin with ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ look like the answers to direct or leading questions. There is also evidence that Sington was led or guided through certain other parts of the confession. For example, he cannot remember the music allegedly being played in the theatre at the time of Commis’s death, until the officers play a recording for him and provide him with the title.

In cognitive screening applied to Sington after he had made his confession, but before the trial began, he was tested for his comprehension of certain terms. Sington did not understand any of the following words, all of which appear in the confession with relevant use: ‘extraneous’, ‘procurator’, ‘duress’, ‘accord’, ‘victimize’ and ‘narcotic’.

Even more disturbingly, he was found not to understand the differences between the words ‘deny’ and ‘agree’, and appears to have used them interchangeably.

Sington was measured as being below ten per cent of average intelligence, and his mental age was estimated to be that of a tenor twelve-year-old boy.

The results of these tests were not admitted as evidence during the trial, and therefore were not known to the jury.

Finally, I consider the actual events which led to the death of Mr Commissah. These were closely examined during the trial, but it is still uncertain as to what really happened.

All that is known for sure is that Mr Commissah, a professional mime artiste who used the stage name ‘Commis’, was performing his act at the Teater Sjokaptein in the town of Omhuuv, on Goorn in the Hetta Group. At the time of year when this happened, Teater Sjokaptein was used as a palace of varieties for summer visitors. During his performance, Mr Commis died when a large piece of plate glass fell suddenly from the rigging loft above the stage. It landed directly on him and he was killed instantly.

Several working men had been seen around the theatre in the days before this, they had been seen in the theatre on the day of the incident, and some of them, supposedly including Kerith Sington, were seen to be running away immediately afterwards. Several members of the audience, and representatives of the theatre’s staff and management, all gave evidence in court to corroborate this. It was never clear what motives there were. Nor was it clear how the plate glass (which was exceedingly heavy) could have been carried up to the loft. And it was never clear how the glass was dropped on or aimed at the victim below.

In the end, the existence of the confession, garbled and self-contradictory as it might have been, was seen to be the principal incriminating evidence, and the judge directed the jury accordingly on the weight they should give it.

One of the matters that came up briefly in evidence at the trial, but was not followed up due to the absence of the crucial witness, was an incident that occurred shortly before the death of Commis.

It seemed that the ship of the line for which Sington worked — Muriseay Marine — had hove to in the fjord outside Omhuuv, and was undergoing routine repairs. It was alleged by the prosecution that Sington had been transferred to this ship after the Galaton was lost. All the crew, including Sington if he were part of it, were given shore leave.

It is then alleged that as was his wont, Sington fell in with a group of others. These young men had apparently been given casual labouring work by the Teater Sjokaptein, which involved clearing rubbish, moving pieces of unwanted scenery, transporting performers’ equipment to and from the station, and so on. They had the use of an antiquated truck. The job gave them access to the theatre and almost certainly accounts for the number of times they were seen in the vicinity of the building.

On the day of the fatal incident the young men were tossing some wooden flats on to the carrying compartment of the truck, and were making a lot of noise. This was witnessed by several passers-by, two of who later gave evidence in court. One witness said he was convinced the men were all drunk, or high on drugs. What then happened was that a third passer-by, irritated by the amount of shouting and banging going on, called up to the men to work more quietly. The group of men shouted back at him, using obscenities and taunting him.

The other witnesses, who did not become involved in the brawl that followed, were clear in what happened.

The third passer-by — to identify him clearly — was of distinctive, not to say eccentric, appearance. He was short and squat (one witness said he was heavily muscled), had a lot of facial hair, and was wearing brightly coloured leisure clothes, unsuited to the early-spring weather. Both the witnesses who gave evidence felt that his remarkable style of clothes almost certainly aggravated the situation. Several of the taunts that were heard were about the way he was dressed. In any event a fight quickly started, with all four of the young men, including, it was alleged, Sington, punching and scrapping in the street around the truck. The third passer-by fought violently and effectively, knocking at least two of his assailants to the ground and briefly winding the other two. At one point the third passer-by was himself knocked to the ground, but he recovered with what the witnesses testified as ‘frightening furiousness’. Many other blows were landed, but the scrap was halted by one of the witnesses shouting that the policier had been called. At this, the four young men climbed into the truck and drove quickly away.

The third passer-by calmly picked up the bag he had been carrying, brushed himself down with his hand, then carried on walking away down the road. Although the description of him was clear and unambiguous, and several townspeople confirmed that they had noticed this oddly dressed man on other occasions, no one was able to identify him and he was never traced. He was not known in the town. He did not come forward in answer to the appeal for witnesses. Finally, it was presumed that he must have been a visitor to the town or a tourist, that he had no connection with Omhuuv and after the street incident had continued on his travels.

The salient point was that this man never came to court to give evidence, so neither prosecution nor defence was able to make much of the fight in the street as a preliminary circumstance for the alleged perpetrator.

However, with hindsight and access to the chronology of events, we can see that this fight happened only a few minutes before the main incident. The young men drove away from the scene of the fight, but then turned around and returned to the theatre. They made their way inside. As a performance was about to start, members of staff instructed them to leave. The four of them said something insolent and walked down through the auditorium, where most of the audience was already seated, waiting for the show. They were highly noticeable and intrusive for a few moments. They then made their way backstage. Having worked in the theatre for a couple of days, they knew their way around.

They were not seen again until immediately after the glass crashed down on to the stage, when most people in the audience saw them running away.

It seems to me that the fight in the street had a direct impact on the behaviour of these four young men. The prosecution said that it inflamed Kerith Sington into a homicidal rage, but they were depending on the unsafe confession to assume that Sington was one of the four. There is absolutely no evidence that he was. Even if he was one of them, now that Sington’s background, mental state and general level of intelligence are known, it is just as likely the scrap had instilled terror in him. Whatever the reliability of those conclusions, his presence in the theatre on the day has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt.

The fact that the four young men ran away afterwards was emphasized as a way of incriminating all of them