The hanging of Ray Williams - Part 1

My favourite old philosophical adage holds true of course: ten leaking buckets hold exactly the same amount of water as one leaking bucket (i.e. no water at all). Even so, the multi-bucket approach carries a certain emotive force and given that these characters needed to justify the amount of public money that had been spent on pursuing Ray, this also made it appear as if they’d been earning their fat salaries.

Ray had gone silent. I prodded him again, “So, what’s the problem? They’ve offered to drop most of the charges in return for finding you guilty on a couple of little ones. It sounds to me like they’ve recognised they haven’t really got much against you. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Ray. “But the problem is…these things they want me to plead guilty to…I didn’t do them!”

Ah! So there’s the rub!

Ray went on to explain, “If the charges were simply that I’d been negligent or had overlooked something I shouldn’t have overlooked, I think I could live with that. But these charges say I deliberately misled people and that I knowingly withheld information and David … I didn’t! If I had known some of these things, there’s no way I would have held back the information. I didn’t know these things! But now they’re telling me that unless I confess to the charges, I will go to jail!”

The overall picture was pretty ugly. Allow me to summarise. What was put to Ray was if he confessed to the three little crimes, the whole legal inquisition would be over by Christmas and he would probably not have to spend any time in jail. Conversely, he was told in no uncertain terms that if he did not confess to the three little crimes, the legal team would pursue him with everything they had and the case would drag on for another two to three years. It would cost him between $2-$3 million more in legal fees and he would certainly end up in jail at the end of it all.

Now, I’m not privy to Ray’s personal financial affairs, but I do know he lost everything when HIH collapsed. There was no way he could afford to fight the legal battle for another two or three years. Even if he did have the financial resources, I wonder if he could have lasted emotionally. They seemed to have him over a barrel, but Ray couldn’t bring himself to accept the inevitable conclusion. I didn’t want to accept it either.

“Now is not the time to sell your soul, is it Ray?” I said.

“No,” he said. “And I know I couldn’t carry through with it anyway. Even if I did sign something now, saying I confessed to these things, I’d get up before the court and somebody would look me in the eye and ask, ‘Did you deliberately withhold this information?’ And I’d break down. I’d say, ‘No, I didn’t’. I wouldn’t be able to carry it through. I’ve got to keep fighting. But how can I?”

Apparently one senior legal guy had said to Ray, “Look mate, I’d confess to raping my own mother if it would keep me out of jail”. Ray had been unimpressed, but he was in a dilemma.

This is the way our legal system works. I've seen it operate like this before, grinding good people down until they can't fight any more. Truth is not the issue. Neither is guilt or innocence. It's a war between two parties and Ray was on the wrong side of the government and the media and was a scapegoat to assuage the public thirst for vengeance. What hope did he have?

The decision

Ray reappeared exactly one week later. This in itself was no surprise. Every Tuesday the staff and volunteers of the church have lunch together and Ray would often join us. What surprised me was what he said to me as soon as lunch was over, “Dave, I’m going to take the guilty plea”.