Trial and tribulations

In 1993, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson killed James Bulger.

Lawyers for the boys' families tell Victoria Maccallum of the court drama and debate whether the killers should be allowed anonymity

In today's fast-moving and information-overloaded society, there are few things that truly capture the public's attention, and still less that have the power to evoke the same emotion years afterwards.The death of Liverpool toddler James Bulger in February 1993 was one of them, and the widespread horror, disgust and bafflement aroused when his murderers were exposed as mere ten-year-olds themselves, still remains close to the surface for many people.

But what of the effect on the lawyers who acted for them?Two-year-old James had been abducted from the New Strand shopping centre in Bootle, Liverpool, as his mother paid for meat in a butcher's shop.

His beaten and abused body was found on a railway line two days later.

Widely publicised CCTV footage showing James being taken from the shopping centre by two boys led to the arrest - and eventual conviction nine months later - of truants Jon Venables and Robert Thompson.The investigation and ensuing court case was carried out against a backdrop of public anger and tabloid revulsion rarely seen before or since; Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf's decision earlier this year to allow the boys, now aged 18, parole merely served to whip up media outrage and reawaken old grievances.The original trial judge, Mr Justice Morland, chose to reveal the boys' names at the end of the trial, and although they both have been given new identities - the press being forbidden by a Draconian injunction from revealing any details - doubt remains as to how long the two can remain anonymous, and safe from the public.'It's inevitable that the boys' identities will be revealed,' says Laurence Lee, of Liverpool firm Laurence Lee & Co, who was Venables' original solicitor and the lawyer who represented him at the 1993 criminal trial.

'The courts are battling against the tide, as the Internet is so vast and the injunction so isolated.'He predicts the danger will come from foreign Web sites which, not being bound by the UK injunction, will be more likely to print photographs.

The courts earlier this month acknowledged this danger by altering the boundaries of the injunction to ensure that Internet service providers could not be held responsible for contemptuous material posted on their Web pages.Dominic Lloyd, of Liverpool firm Lloyd Lees Dures, is the solicitor for Thompson and his family, and agrees that there is a real danger from the media.

'I know for a fact that the media are actively trying to uncover details of the boys,' he says, adding that the previous week he had been dealing with a paper which was 'convinced' that it had an up-to-date photo of Venables.This, of course, raises the question of whether the original trial judge was right to reveal the boys' identities - a decision that he took with the intention of provoking a 'full and frank' public discussion of youth crime.'Put it this way, I don't think they'll do that again in a hurry,' says Robin Makin, a lawyer with E Rex Makin & Co, who represents James's father, Ralph.

'The way the whole issue has been handled by the courts and judges was naive, and giving the public their names has simply caused a lot of problems for them.'Mr Lee, perhaps unsurprisingly, puts it stronger.

'I was staggered when I found out what the judge did,' he says.

'It was an unbelievable decision to make: not so much for the boys themselves, but for their brothers and sisters who are now always going to be known as relatives of the Bulger killers.'His fears have been realised - the Thompson family has been forced to move house nine times since the trial ended, and the Venables family has changed its name and is still in hiding.However, not all are as sympathetic.

Mr Makin, who has represented Mr Bulger in his attempts to secure a longer tariff for the boys, takes a different view.

'It's unfair for Thompson and Venables to have their privacy protected when people such as the Bulger family have no such protection.'Denise Fergus, James's mother, represented by Sean Sexton of Moore Sexton Bibby, and Mr Bulger have made repeated demands for the two boys to serve longer sentences, and have been accused by many of stoking the fires of vigilantism.

Mr Makin disagrees.

'Ralph frequently appeals for calm and never tries to inflame the situation, because we are trying to deal with serious legal issues which go to the heart of the criminal justice system - we want the victim's views to be listened to and the idea of retribution taken into account.'Although Mr Makin claims that he 'never panders to public feeling or media attention', it cannot be easy for even the most experienced lawyer to treat such a case, with its huge international profile and simmering raw emotions, the same as any other.Mr Lee admits to suffering 'post-Bulger syndrome' after the trial ended.

'Fifteen minutes before the trial began, the atmosphere in the court was like being at Wembley waiting for your team to come out,' he said.

'You could touch the atmosphere, and I remember telling myself to memorise every moment because I'd never be involved with anything like this again.'Describing himself as a 'run-of-the-mill suburban criminal lawyer', Mr Lee says that finding himself at the centre of one of the most infamous trials of the century 'certainly took some getting used to'.

His personal skills, honed from years of representing truculent defendants, were stretched - he remembers playing endless computer games and darts matches with Venables, trying to gain his trust and get him to open up about the events of that day.The obvious downside of such a 'magical' trial from a lawyer's point of view, he frankly admits, was the aftermath.

'A major side-effect was that everything afterwards seemed so insignificant,' he said.

'Getting back to bread-and-butter drunk and disorderlies was not easy.' He has benefited from numerous media spin-offs from the trial, such as reporting in recent BBC 'Correspondent' programme about a six-year-old Norwegian girl murdered by her schoolfriends.One consequence that never materialised for either of the boys' lawyers were the attacks suffered by so many others connected with the killers.

'I had one anonymous letter telling me that "I had a lot to answer for", 'says Mr Lee.

'Apart from that, and a phone call from someone telling me to "watch my windows", I've had no problems.'Mr Lloyd has also escaped relatively unscathed.

'People are generally good at separating the client from the lawyer, and they know that I'm just doing a job,' he says, although he admits that he has 'very probably' lost other clients as a result of his involvement.Mr Lee adopts the attitude to those who question his involvement in the case that if the Nazis were allowed to have lawyers at the Nuremberg trials, then so should these two troubled young boys.

'It's also vital for a solicitor not to be blinkered in defence of his client,' he says.

'You can't forget about the victims, and I've always said that my first sympathy is for the Bulger family.'He is still angry at what he sees as the unfairness of the boys' public treatment.

'Murders just as horrific as this happen all the time,' he argues.

'The Anna Climbie case this year [the young Ivory Coast girl abused and murdered by her aunt and the aunt's boyfriend] was just as gruesome, and - unlike the Bulger case - a preconceived act, yet the average man on the street couldn't name her killers.'Whatever the rights and wrongs, the fact remains that eight years later public feeling remains high, and the recent release of the boys has done nothing but inflame it further.The boys' future looks bleak, and Mr Lee doubts that Venables even wants to be released.

'He knows what is out there waiting for him: the public is not ready to move on.

Even if the boys were to be released 20 years from now, parents would pass on their resentment to their children and the hatred directed at them would continue on and on.'