Free The Islanders by Christopher Priest Page A

consequences for himself) has made the suspicion of policier intimidation too unreliable as evidence. This was almost certainly why the trial judge ruled the matter as inadmissible.
    It was Caurer who argued, and I concur entirely with her, that when Sington’s impressionable and sometimes boastful psychology is taken into account, it becomes increasingly likely that this unhappy young man might have seen one case as providing mitigation for the other.
    In addition, it concerns me that I have been unable to locate any policier or court records dealing with the fatal collision between the Galaton and the Roopah . The only official record is the inquest report, but that of course mainly concerns itself with the manner in which the victims died. Why have these important records been lost, removed or in some other way made inaccessible?
    I turn now to the concerns over Sington’s confession.
    In common with most indigenous island people, Sington in effect spoke two languages. Officially, his language of everyday function was demotic Archipelagian, the common linguistic currency. From the trial transcripts we can divine that Sington was not at all articulate, that he clearly struggled not only to understand what was said 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