The evidence also includes statements that have been read to you in the contents of the documents of the files that you have. There are also the written admissions in the document that is in your jury file. Those admissions are evidence of the facts stated and the evidence of your own eyes when you went to Coniston and Leece. Do not forget the admissions and the statements, although perhaps read in a neutral voice by Counsel doing a fair job, they sometimes contain quite important facts which put the matters into context, so please remember that. It is just as important as a fact that is stated by somebody who you see live in the witness box.
Just before moving to the evidence itself, let me inform you of one piece of evidence which is not material to any issue in this case. It is one matter which no doubt thankfully you can put entirely out of your minds. You recall that during the course of evidence questions were put to Mrs. Park about monies paid to Mr. Park by a newspaper. On reflection whether or not he was paid money is not relevant to any matter in issue in this case. The issue is whether he killed his wife Carol. You should therefore disregard it in coming to your verdicts. If you have any opinions about this kind of conduct one way or the other, you should ignore them and concentrate on what is relevant in the case, which is everything else.
Now what I say in the course of this attempt to help you and what Counsel say is not evidence. We each try to help you in your task of assessing the evidence. If, for example, and you have been reminded of this I think by both Mr. Webster and Mr. Edis and in a sense perhaps some of them, each of them was guilty of it at certain times. They put a suggestion to a witness. That is not evidence. It is only evidence if the witness agrees that that happened. In places where parts of a witness's statement to the police was put to him or her, the extracts are not evidence unless the witness told you that what he or she said to the police in the relevant extract was true. However, previous inconsistencies on the part of a witness between what he or she may have told the police and what he or she said in evidence can be taken into account in assessing the reliability of the witness concerned, even where the witness disavows what he or she said in the previous statement.