Monday 14th to Friday 18th of April.

While Kieran Coonan had a route map with which he led Dr Wakefield through his evidence in chief, Miss Smith, in her cross examination seems to cover vast areas of desert in a vehicle with a disconnected Sat. Nav. Although she moved from one set of questions to another in a more or less linear manner, she bogged herself down frequently, and laboured so many points that one quickly forgot not only where one was in the evidence, but who and where one was in life itself.

As everyone who reads crime fiction will know, motive plays a considerable part in the detection process. In fact it is one of the corner-stones of classic detection, the others being forensic and witness evidence followed by evidence of alibi. It is interesting to look at Miss Smith's case in light of these factors. When it comes to alibi evidence, Dr Wakefield always appears to be somewhere other than the place where Miss Smith's faux crimes are committed. The important witnesses are either on his side or charged alongside of him and if we consider the mountain of paper work that insulates the hearing room as forensic evidence, quite unlike other kinds of forensic evidence, it is all vulnerable to textual misinterpretation. However, it is in the area of motive that Ms Smith's case falls down so absolutely.

As Miss Smith increasingly adopted a moral-high-ground whine throughout the week, manically repeating charges, and as a superhuman effort was needed on behalf of observers to stop the slide into coma, a question rose to the surface of one's mind. After so far honourable careers in medicine and medical research why would Dr Wakefield and his co-accused suddenly begin to experiment on children, without research ethics committee approval or parental consent? Why would a research worker of Dr Wakefield's calibre, with a grant funding history involving some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the country, suddenly wantonly disguise a conflict of interest?

There is, inevitably, room for sympathy for Miss Smith. Like an East End market trader she has been sold a Dear Brian pup by the GMC and in order to stay alive she has to sell it on. This process involves what might rightly be called a confidence trick. Miss Smith has to turn a well run-down car into a limousine in front of a sceptical audience. Consequently, big issues like motive have from the beginning of the hearing, like the children themselves, and their parents, been ignored.

In some circumstances, the question of motive cannot even be framed because Miss Smith only hints at what Dr Wakefield might have been guilty of. Take the case of the £55,000 funding that the legal aid board paid to the Royal Free Hospital so that work might continue into possible links between measles virus and inflammatory bowel disease. It has always been implied by the prosecution that somehow even the idea of this is completely unacceptable and there has been not a murmur from Miss Smith about the comparable situation that occupies the time and the intelligence of the whole herd of academics who have dedicated their lives to being expert witnesses for the pharmaceutical industry.

In relation to this money, Miss Smith claims that Dr Wakefield didn't spend the second £25,000 tranche of it on his research. However, she failed to tell the panel what he did spend it on, so leaving a great yawning criminal chasm for the panel to ponder. The mind's eye sees Dr Wakefield dressed like a spiv, fanning out notes in his hand at the dog track, leering like a young George Cole in a St Trinian's film.

Prior to this accusation that Dr Wakefield had spent the money on himself, she had ranted on for hours about him trying to defraud the legal aid board, by billing bogus claims for clinical procedures which were not actually carried out. In this scenario, he was a simple fraudster; profit, apparently, his sole motive. This later example is perhaps a good one to expand in order to explain the difference in the two stories narrated by Dr Wakefield and Miss Smith. Which story would you believe?