KEY POINTS:
Peter Williams, QC, and, according to me but not necessarily to him, the champion of the underdog, says yes, of course I can come around on Thursday, even though it is his "day of worship".
Stranger things have happened, I suppose, than Williams, who is often described as
a pinko liberal, finding God. But it is just one of his little jokes. He has many of these and he favours a deadpan telling, a longish silence, then he releases his long laugh.
I've never met anyone with such a long laugh, it is longer even than the Dalai Lama's, and it is a very good device for dealing with questions because by the time he's finished laughing you've forgotten what you asked and he can go on talking about something else altogether.
Anyway, he hasn't found God; he's found tennis and he plays every Thursday afternoon. He used to play squash but he says he's getting a bit old now (he's 73 this year) and tennis is kinder on the hips, for some reason. He says his tennis is not really competitive - "We don't pay much attention to the score." I bet he does. He's a criminal lawyer. "Oh! Ha ha ha, etc."
He likes to keep his body fit and his mind, too, which is another reason he was in court this week for the sentencing of Kori Trevithick, who was 15 when he stabbed 77-year-old Doreen Reed to death.
This sounds like just the sort of tough case Williams would take on. It involves a corner from which it is hard, if not impossible, to argue for any sympathy for the perpetrator. "It is," he says.
Yet it doesn't take much reading between the lines of the reports of this case to figure out that Williams does have quite a lot of sympathy for his client. "Yeah, I do have sympathy for him. I've spent a certain amount of time with him and got to know him and got to know his family."
He thinks the 14-year sentence is "excessive for a 15-year-old boy. I think when you take all the circumstances into consideration and take an overview, that a sentence around about 10 years would have been more appropriate and that is what, in the old days, you would have got".
Actually, he takes on hardly any cases these days and while this one gives him another chance to air his great passion, penal reform, he says he only took it because "well, I've got this partner of mine [Heeni Phillips] who's relatively recently qualified in the law and she's still got the enthusiasm that people have when they start off in the law. So I do the odd case really because it gives her experience".
I would have imagined that most of his cases were legal aid, like this one, but he says he doesn't do them. "Well, for the simple reason that, quite frankly, buggering around with all the documents [doesn't appeal], if you really want to know. I prefer, if I do a case, to agree on a fee and get the fee paid."
I thought he was the champion of the underdog. That's his reputation, surely. "I think, like many things, it's more complicated than that. I don't hold myself out as a prosecutor who takes on cases where there is no money involved. The work that I do for the so-called underdog, to use your expression, is really connected with the Howard League and its more general efforts to reform the law, reform the penal system, and the Howard League does not take on court cases."
The Howard League is run by him and Phillips and their meetings usually take place in the room we're sitting in now, in the house in Ponsonby which he says is "old and dilapidated, like me. Ha ha ha".
Williams has been a lawyer since 1957 and he did the big trials when big-bang trials were big: there were so few of them. His name is linked, in that strange way that top lawyers' names are, to the notorious, the bad and the mad. He was ticked off early on for fraternising with his criminal clients to, in harrumphing lawyerish language, an unacceptable degree. His career was under a cloud for some time thanks to his supposed fraternising with Terry Clark of the Mr Asia drug ring. A story from the files begins: "His career has earned him fame and a great deal of money. It has also earned him notoriety. It has also earned him persistent rumours that he is crooked."
"Mm, well, I've successfully sued one or two people for that. Ha ha ha, etc. I look at it this way, I've been made a Queen's Counsel and you don't get made a Queen's Counsel unless you've got a pretty good record."
He does like to sue. He's done it quite a bit and it amuses him and, I say, has paid for his yachts over the years. He can't remember whom he has and hasn't sued, but if he did over that story it's as likely to be over the "great deal of money" bit because here he is living in his old and dilapidated house in Ponsonby.
That is a wildly exaggerated claim but it is true he does not live in any great luxury. Well-worn comfort is more his style. He is interviewed in his slippers.
He may have had the "great deal of money" at some stage; he's had a few wives. How many? "Oh, let's not go in to all that." Shall I say eight? "They've all been wonderful." I think he's had two wives but as he won't say, eight serves him right. He's had a few girlfriends along the way too, I think. He's one of those men who likes to say how much they like women and in my experience they've usually had a few dalliances. He's settled down happily now but there is, even in his 70s, a bit of the rogue in him. Perhaps it's catching, this sort of thing, because he likes rogues and fraternising with them, appropriately, of course. He was great friends with Ron Jorgensen, one of the Bassett Rd machine-gun murderers ("he didn't shoot anyone really, you know, but we won't go into all that") who was last seen in 1984 before he disappeared while on parole. There has long been speculation that he is, or was, still alive, and I ask Williams if he's sure "Jorgy" is not living in his shed under the piles and piles of court files he keeps there.
"I'd love it if he was. If I thought he was alive nothing on this earth would give me greater pleasure than to take him somewhere and have a conversation and a meal. I was very, very fond of Jorgy."
He gave me a tour before the interview of Jorgensen's paintings, which are really very good; and the painting (not so good) Terry Clark did of Williams' yacht. These, and the 200 odd files - "I can show them to you. Do you want to see them?" - are strange trophies of a career.
He doesn't really know what to do with the files and he might need them, you never know. Also, he threw some out once and picked up a Sunday paper to find that photos from murder files had turned up at the dump. "They blamed the police and of course it was me! I had to own up."
He is also very fond of John Yelash, who sued the Prime Minister for calling him a convicted murderer when he was convicted of manslaughter. He says he'll give me a copy of his poetry CD (poems by Williams; read by Yelash) and I say, "Are they any good?"
"Ha, ha, I doubt whether it rates with the top echelon." Well, why does he write poetry at all?
"I think it's an inner spring that we all have if you can get to it and you can express your inner feelings. I write in this sort of flowing way, not at all that formal. I detest George Bush and detest the religious right and I detest the way we build our prisons and keep people there like battery hens and don't take care of their mental life and ... " So, not very inner thoughts, then.
He's doing a poetry event with Yelash on July 1 but he can't remember where. He gave me Yelash's number so I could ask but it was the wrong number so he got Yelash to leave a message for me and at first he didn't know the name of the place either.
It turned out to be the Depot Artspace in Devonport and here's a sample of what the audience there may hear: "Chirac, you old arsehole parading like an aged rooster, gloating like the devil stoat ... "
I asked if he had any friends who weren't ex-crims and he said, "Oh, well, I suppose there's got to be a few somewhere! I've got a few judges. I like people and I don't put labels on people and I treat people as they treat me and also I like people who have really overcome problems."
Still, the rogues, I say, have all the good stories. "Yeah, well, there's a certain truth in that. If you went to a movie and everybody was all goody-good all the time, it'd get a bit boring, wouldn't it?"
He claims he doesn't want any more work; he wants to get out on his boat and is considering one last big ocean trip. So why doesn't he just say, "That's it. I've retired"? "Because I'm not altogether sure I want to! Ha ha ha, etc."
He'd quite like someone to take over the Howard League, but "it's not everyone's cup of tea". And he does, I think, enjoy the public profile.
"I'd hate you to say that I appeared to be conceited, because I'm not at all."
Oh, all right - to stop him suing - he's not the slightest bit conceited but he is a bit mad. He's rejected the labels I've attempted to foist on him, but he doesn't mind that one. Because all criminal lawyers are a bit mad, aren't they? "I think you're right. I've seen quite a bit of madness among them. Oh, I think I'm a little bit mad myself. Ha ha ha, etc."
