The QC brought back from the brink of death
He’s one of Wales’ most famous barristers and has been at the heart of many high-profile murder cases, but a year ago Patrick Harrington was involved in a horrendous car crash which left doctors fearing the worst as he slipped into a coma. Laura Clements visits the lawyer and finds him busier than ever and determined to carry on his vital work...
JUST over a year ago, one of Wales’ most esteemed barristers was involved in a high-speed crash on the M4 that smashed his BMW and his skull in equal measure.
Lying in a coma for the next two months, his wife and two adult children were warned that Patrick Harrington QC was unlikely to recover his memory or speech if, indeed, he ever woke up at all.
Yet just a few months later Patrick was back in the courtroom doing what he does best and securing a guilty verdict from the jury during the murder trial of former Ospreys youth player Tom Carney.
For someone who was not expected to regain consciousness, it’s an extraordinary recovery for a man with an even more extraordinary career.
“I remember the day because I was going to a dental appointment in Cardiff,” said Patrick, settled on a highbacked chair in the drawing room of his Georgian-era house on the outskirts of Raglan in Monmouthshire.
“I was just before the Brynglas tunnels when my car went out of control and I crashed into the barrier and went down some steps. The next thing I remember is waking up two months later in the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff.”
He was, apparently, conscious when paramedics found him at the side of the motorway, but he has no recollection of it at all.
Patrick had fractured his skull on both sides as well as his neck.
Although he is home and has been back working since October, he is waiting for an operation to reconstruct a part of his skull which is still missing.
“I still can’t stand up straight, or at least as much as I would like,” he added.
As the 71-year-old lay in a coma his wife Susan, son Fergus and daughter Rebecca were told to expect the worst after the crash in January 2020. But Patrick woke up unprompted one day in March with memory and speech intact, which doctors said was “extraordinary”.
“In fact they started using the term ‘miraculous,’ which I think is a bit extreme,” said Patrick.
This is a man who seemingly doesn’t do drama or superlatives, at least when it’s about himself. Perhaps because, having acted in 250 homicide cases, he’s seen it all and there’s not much left that will surprise him.
But anyone who’s watched Patrick in action knows that’s not true either – he is all about the drama and presentation and it’s something he is wellknown for, he admits. He is only too aware of the power of language and how performance can sway a jury.
“I’m still surrounded by colleagues who can’t grasp the language,” he says, not disparagingly but in a way that shows he thinks they’re missing a trick. He’s not afraid to say “outrageous things” and enjoys the fact that it’s become his “forte”.
To illustrate the point, he describes the trial of Ben Hope and Jason Richards, who killed 17-year-old Aamir Siddiqi at his home in Cardiff after carrying out a contract killing on the wrong victim, in the wrong house, in 2010.
Patrick, acting for the prosecution at the trial at Swansea Crown Court in 2012, got up and said the killers exhibited “staggering incompetence” after being hired by a businessman to attack a man living in a nearby street. He addressed the jury and said: “It was evidently a cowardly attack, a brutal attack by two heroin-fuelled contract killers.”
His words had been carefully chosen for maximum effect and they resonated far and wide beyond the courtroom, with nearly every news outlet carrying his exact words in their headlines.
His starting point is to work out what’s different about each case and what is going to be the highlight.
“My ambition is always to get the jury on side,” he said. “To present the case and think things through so it’s a note with the jury that stays with them. To think of a form of words that’s going to be memorable.”
In 2017 a colleague described Patrick as: “One of the best jury advocates in the UK in my opinion. Juries just love him.
“He plays the jury like a really good musician – he knows exactly what’s right for the jury, strips the case down to bare essentials whether prosecuting or defending a serious crime and is very good at pretending to the jury that he’s just coming to terms with the facts of the case as the case is developing, even though you know he’s got an encyclopaedic knowledge of the case.”
The comparison to a musician is not far off the mark – there was a time when Patrick was in an all-barrister band which they’d rather comically named Brief Encounter. They played Sixties rock mostly, Patrick said with a rare chuckle, and in another life he may well have been a rock star if the law hadn’t taken over.
His approach is one that has worked to great effect and, while it’s impossible to list every case he’s ever worked on here, it’s fair to say he’s been involved in nearly every high-profile murder case in Wales in the past 40-odd years. His first-ever murder case was in 1982, a year noted for a particularly harsh winter that forced many people to stay indoors and social care services to grind to a halt. He remembers it well, if only because he spent several days stranded at Geneva Airport after a ski trip. The result was a number of geriatric murders, with seven homicides in south Wales alone.
Still a junior barrister then, he was getting “more than a fair share” of the workload, he said.
“I don’t think I’ve been without a murder case since,” he added.
His CV includes the trial of David Morris and the Clydach murders, Jeffrey Gafoor in the notorious Lynette White case, the Geraldine Palk murder trial and the trial of killer Stephen Hough. Patrick came out on top in every single one.
His style works when he’s defending too, although he doesn’t ever say he’s “got someone off” if he manages to obtain a verdict of manslaughter for a client instead of murder, for example.
“I’m pleased with the work I’ve done,” he explained. “I use the word ‘acquitted’ rather than having ‘got them off.’ I’m satisfied that the verdict has been reached, but I never class it as a win or a loss.
“It’s a job and I want to do it well. It’s just the outcome and then you go on to the next one.”
Even so, coming up against some of the most evil men and women in the country and listening to their depravity and evil must surely take its toll? Patrick brushes off such a suggestion and says he is able to “compartmentalise” his emotions.
“Good or bad, emotions affect performance,” he said. “I try not to get emotionally involved in cases. Whether you develop a like or a dislike for a client or a member of the opposition, it can impair your judgement.”
That was particularly hard, however, when it came to David Morris, who was tried and eventually found guilty of murdering an entire family of four including two young girls in Clydach. However, ever since his conviction in 1999 there have been doubts by some as to whether Morris was responsible.
“That was three generations of one family that were wiped out,” Patrick said. “I got to meet the extended family and you get to know them and see their dignity. They are grateful to you for trying to get justice and I feel very humble when I realise that dignity.”
When it comes to that particular case, he believes the media and public have been “unnecessarily biased” in favour of the defendant and has no doubt about whether the right verdict was reached.
“The story is better if you have an angle,” he said about media attempts to portray a different perspective on the case.
It was the same with the Siddiqi case, he said. He marvelled at the use of CCTV footage by police to build their case against Richards and Hope and remembers it as a “brilliant investigation”.