Why Did the Defence advise Dr Vincent Tabak to make a guilty plea in MAY.. when they wouldn't have had the case files for too long and hadn't researched their own thoroughly investigations into the case??
When did Clegg take over???
If you had read the translation that I have posted of Vincent Tabak's diary, then you would know that he was already thinking about pleading guilty in February 2011. That is what he told the so-called prison chaplain, Peter Brotherton, who testified to this under oath. Just for the record: I do not believe this witness perjured himself - but neither did he state that VT had confessed to the killing, contrary to what everyone was told.
Clegg took over some time between February and May 2011. The instructing solicitor Ian Kelcey was also new.
VT's first defence team, Albion Chambers, instructed by Crossman & Co of Radstock, told the magistrate that their client would be applying for bail. If it is true, as has been stated by John, that bail would never be granted to a foreigner charged with such a serious offence, then it would have been amazingly incompetent of these lawyers not to have noticed that their client was a foreigner nor to have anticipated this problem. I am not sure that I really believe they were incompetent.
At any event, the barrister Paul Cook did an about-turn the very next day by telling judge Colman Treacy that his client would not be applying for bail. It seems obvious to me that it was not Vincent Tabak who changed his mind about bail, but that something caused the lawyers to change their minds. It seems obvious to me that he might feel he was in the hands of what Aerial Hunter so bluntly called a "two-bit drongo solicitor" - and would turn to the prison chaplain for advice on how to get a more competent lawyer.
Presumably it was also "drongo" who first put into VT's head the idea of pleading guilty of manslaughter. I really don't know why she did this. A possibility that has emerged during discussions on this forum is the revelation that VT had known Joanna very well, including in the biblical sense, contrary to what he had told his duty solicitor. That would alter everything.