Stokes jury asked to consider if Alex Hales was cause of injuries
JURORS at the Ben Stokes affray trial were yesterday asked to consider whether an England team-mate of the accused cricketer was responsible for the worst injuries sustained by a fire brigade worker during a brawl.
Gordon Cole QC, representing Stokes, asked them to take into account the “blows, kicks and/or stamps” car- ried out by Alex Hales, the Nottinghamshire batsman, as they weigh up whether Stokes was to blame for Ryan Ali’s broken eye socket.
Jurors will today be sent out to consider their verdicts against Stokes, 27, and Ali, 28, after Judge Peter Blair QC told them not to speculate about why two key witnesses – William O’connor and Kai Barry – had not been called to give evidence. “It would be completely wrong to guess,” the judge said.
Stokes has insisted he was acting in self-defence when he hit Ali, and Ryan Hale, 27, after they had abused two gay men near a nightclub.
Bristol Crown Court has heard that the start to the violence is unknown but Ali, also on trial accused of affray, swung a beer bottle at Hales.
Stokes is accused of knocking Mr Ali to the floor, with Hales then apparently kicking his head and stamping on him. Ali suffered a fracture to the medial orbital wall on the left of his face, with swelling on his left eye and a laceration above his eyebrow, a cracked lower left molar and a bruise behind his left ear.
Mr Cole asked the jury to carefully consider video footage taken by Max Wilson, a student, who began filming after hearing shouting in the street.
“So, when the prosecution seeks to hang all the blame at Ben Stokes’s door by saying he rendered people unconscious, just look at what happened,” the barrister said.
“Think about kicks and stamps. There’s no evidence before you…but you can infer from what you know of injuries sustained. Sustained perhaps by Alex Hales’s intervention? Blows, kicks and/or stamps to the head area.
“Does it follow that all of these injuries are properly attributed to Ben Stokes? We say no. We say that the evidence is ambiguous.”
Last week, the jury acquitted Mr Hale of affray after the judge ruled there was insufficient evidence.
Stokes, of Castle Eden, Durham, and Ali, of Bristol, each deny a charge of affray.
The trial continues.