The conditions were ‘freezing’, the food ‘inadequate’ and the days long, sometimes 19 hours with little or no rest.
Constance Marten might have been describing the desperate privations she and her lover Mark Gordon faced when they went on the run, camping in the depths of winter to hide their baby from social services.
But it appears that experience paled in comparison to going on trial at the Old Bailey.
In a bid to sway jurors midway through her prosecution, Marten gave a magazine interview headlined ‘Surviving Serco’, complaining her trial was ‘prejudiced’ by the ‘inhumane’ conditions she endured behind bars.
In an accompanying podcast which proclaimed, ‘this is the very foundation of a fair trial being undermined’, Marten bemoaned the long journeys to court in transport provided by private contractor Serco and ‘disgusting’ microwave meals in her ‘stone-cold’ Old Bailey cell.
‘I’m being made to survive these 17 to 19-hour days with little or no rest, no food,’ she said, without a hint of irony.
Marten also breached a High Court anonymity order by providing photographs of her older children to the magazine, risking prosecution for contempt of court.
It was just one of the many extraordinary attempts she and her scheming partner Mark Gordon made to derail a prosecution which has cost taxpayers around £2.8million over two trials across the last two years.
Constance Marten, 38, (pictured) complained of poor conditions and inadequate food, no rest and even raised prosecution for contempt of court during her trial at the Old Bailey
Mark Gordon, 50, (pictured) schemed with his partner to derail a prosecution which has cost taxpayers around £2.8million over two trials across the last two years
The couple conspired to delay, lie and obfuscate the trial to decide whether they were guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence/causing or allowing the death of their daughter
Over that period, the couple conspired to delay, lie and obfuscate, often failing to turn up to court, inventing fictitious ailments and disregarding the judge’s orders, shouting across him and chatting in the dock as the evidence was outlined.
As a consequence, their first trial last year was scheduled to last six weeks but ended up taking six months – and concluded with jurors unable to agree verdicts.
Then their retrial overran by more than a month as the pair continued to manipulate proceedings.
At times, Marten was so rude to the Recorder of London, Judge Mark Lucraft, that he had to banish her to the cells.
At one point she contemptuously said of his legal directions: ‘Are they going to be better than last year? I’ve got very little respect for you.’
The long-suffering judge declared that the defendants were behaving worse than two teenagers charged with murder with their continual ‘antics’ to ‘deliberately sabotage the trial’.
‘I’ve sat as a full-time judge now for 13 years and I’ve never had that sort of attitude by anybody,’ he said.
‘I’ve tolerated a lot of unpleasant behaviour. This is a court of law – dignity must be shown.’
The long-suffering judge declared that the defendants were behaving worse than two teenagers charged with murder with their continual ‘antics’ to ‘deliberately sabotage the trial’
Loathed even by their own lawyers, the pair frequently sacked their legal representatives, humiliating them from the dock by firing them on the spot.
Astonishingly, Marten and Gordon went through a total of 18 lawyers during the trials, many of whom were visibly relieved to escape their clients’ impossible demands, with one lawyer overheard to describe them as the ‘worst defendants I have ever dealt with’.
Another barrister was dispensed within ten minutes of being instructed by the capricious pair.
Despite being an heiress worth £2.4million, Marten refused to pay her lawyers for pre-trial hearings, forcing one to turn up in the middle of the retrial demanding to speak to her about civil proceedings being launched to recoup the money she owed.
In a scandal which raises questions about the legal aid system, the pair were consequently granted taxpayer funding for their defence, claiming an estimated £600,000.
This landed taxpayers with a total bill of around £1million for defence and prosecution lawyers, on top of the £600,000 court and £1.2million investigation costs.
From when they were charged in March 2023, Marten and Gordon refused to submit defence case statements and failed to show up for preliminary hearings, making spurious claims of illness ranging from headaches to shoulder strain, back pain and toothache.
The judge bent over backwards to accommodate the pair, personally ringing prison governors to request medical and dental appointments only for them to refuse to see medical professionals.
Despite being an heiress worth £2.4million, Marten refused to pay her lawyers for pre-trial hearings – the pair were granted taxpayer funding for their defence, claiming £600,000
The first trial was delayed for weeks when Marten failed to appear, leading to the prosecution starting without her.
Similarly, Gordon initially refused to leave his cell for his retrial before sacking his barrister on the first day.
Court six of the Old Bailey resembled a circus at times, with Judge Lucraft having to repeatedly tell them: ‘This is not a game.’
At one point the furious judge said: ‘This has got to stop. In my view, this is a complete sham. Constance Marten is not running this trial. I’m running this trial.
‘This trial will continue whether she is here or not. I can’t countenance any more delays. This is a huge public expense.’
Gordon also frequently refused to attend hearings, claiming at one stage that he could not come because his ‘court shirt’ had been lost at HMP Belmarsh in south London, which meant jurors were kept waiting hours while his lawyer went shopping for him.
Perhaps the 50-year-old didn’t want the jury to see his prison tracksuit, which designated him as an escape risk.
By the time of the retrial, the judge was weary, saying: ‘We ran the A-Z of excuses last time. There is a [Wallace and Gromit] cartoon called The Wrong Trousers and I recall that was one of the reasons we could not sit, because Mr Gordon was wearing the wrong trousers.
The criminal retrial descended into chaos when Marten decided to breach reporting restrictions by telling jurors that Gordon (pictured) had been convicted of a violent rape aged 14
Marten insisted an official inquiry be held into her treatment behind bars after claims of abusive staff and poor living conditions
‘It seems like I’m being flippant, but these matters are serious.’
Such was their victim mentality that the couple felt entitled to make a series of extraordinary demands.
Gordon told Judge Lucraft to see to it that he had a shave in Belmarsh and ordered the judge to change a dock officer whom he took exception to, prompting the exasperated judge to respond: ‘I haven’t got a magic wand.’
Meanwhile, Marten objected to the open justice of Britain’s courts, shouting, ‘I demand my privacy’ as she complained that people were looking at her in the dock.
She insisted an official inquiry be held into her treatment behind bars, demanding to know the prison governor’s name and for seven guards to be brought to the Old Bailey to attest that she had been called names by a fellow defendant.
‘I was abused for three hours yesterday by someone in a cell saying I’m a baby killer,’ Marten moaned.
‘They said I’m so fat I sat on my baby. I’m not going to be abused in court or out of court.’
But the court heard that in reality Marten was the one being ‘argumentative and abusive’ to prison staff.
The pair had already spent years trying to play the family courts in an identical manner, claiming £89,000 in legal aid while they presented ‘false information’
The judge said: ‘Frankly it is an insult to this court and this jury that the defendants feel that whatever they want to do, they can. That is not how the system works.’
But the pair had already spent years trying to play the family courts in an identical manner, claiming £89,000 in legal aid while they presented what one judge described as ‘false information in a plausible and confident manner designed to mislead professionals’.
The criminal retrial descended into chaos when Marten decided to breach reporting restrictions by telling jurors that Gordon had been convicted of a violent rape aged 14.
The bombshell revelation, condemned by Judge Lucraft as a ‘deliberate attempt to sabotage the trial’, brought proceedings to the verge of collapse after the pair then sacked their lawyers.
The trial limped on after Marten re-hired a junior barrister, but Gordon decided to represent himself, creating a new headache for the judge.
Gordon initially claimed he ‘didn’t mind’ about the prejudice to his case.
But days later, he pretended that he had never been convicted of rape.
Prosecutors were forced to request conviction certificates from Florida to prove it was Gordon who committed the 1989 attack.
Gordon decided to represent himself in the case – and eventually ended up cross-examining Marten himself
Follow every detail of the case on The Mail’s acclaimed podcast The Trial
The Trial takes listeners behind the headlines and into the courtrooms of some of the biggest criminal cases in the world.
The first series, ‘The Trial of Lucy Letby’ received more than 13million downloads.
Season two focused on the murder of Ashling Murphy, a 23-year-old teacher from Ireland. Season three followed the case of the murder of Brianna Ghey, a 16-year-old teenager.
Season four will follow the evidence as the jury hears it in twice weekly reports from The Daily Mail’s news reporter, Jack Hardy, and broadcast journalist, Caroline Cheetham.
They will take you into the courtroom to bring you the details as the evidence unfolds, to examine key moments and to carry out exclusive interviews with detectives, victims, and experts.
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The farce continued as Gordon was allowed to question Marten himself, standing in the dock firing off 88 questions to his lover about why they went on the run with their newborn.
Meanwhile, Marten refused to be cross examined by the prosecutor, calling him ‘diabolical’, to the concern of her own lawyer, who suggested she was ‘not fit to give evidence’ and ‘needed to see a psychiatrist’.
Marten shouted back: ‘I will refuse to see a psychiatrist. I want to give evidence,’ before less than 30 seconds later declaring: ‘I don’t want to give evidence.’
Gordon wasted days of court time claiming he needed to read irrelevant legislation, pretending he had left behind papers in his cells and insisting he had to read the criminal law text Archbold Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice.
The judge retorted: ‘Providing you with a copy of Archbold is not going to help you very much, although as the editor I would be very keen for the sales increase – it is actually a book which covers the whole of criminal law. It’s a book of 3,500 pages. How much is going to help you?
‘You need a law degree. What do you want me to do, adjourn for three years while you do a law degree?’
Things came to a head when Gordon accused the judge of ‘abuse of process’ after he was stopped from wasting yet more time with irrelevant questions.
In the absence of jurors, the judge said he had no choice but to discharge the jury.
But Gordon perversely withdrew his application, claiming he in fact had every faith in the fairness of the judge and the trial.
In his closing speech, Gordon was allowed to wax on for days about being ‘dehumanised’ and ‘vilified’ during the prosecution, blaming class and racial stereotypes, the Government and the police for ‘robbing’ him of a daughter.
His closing speech was littered with so many lies that the judge had to direct jurors to dismiss most of it.
Clutching a microphone in the dock, he grandly proclaimed: ‘Support those who stood up to government overreach. In this trial acquit me and my wife, Mark Gordon and Constance Marten.
‘When we are acquitted my wife and I will pursue the CPS for wrongful prosecution. I will call for a public inquiry, I will pursue the police. Once you acquit us ladies and gentlemen, we will delve into the public inquiry.’
But Prosecutor Tom Little KC pointed out that the couple had blamed everyone but themselves.
‘In her very short life baby Victoria did not stand a chance,’ he said. ‘That is the cold, hard, brutal reality of this case. There is no point in soft-soaping it.
‘Baby Victoria would still be alive if it was not for the actions and inactions of these two defendants.’
Today, there was no one else left to blame.
