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The end: Archer
goes to jail
By Sue Clough, Courts Correspondent (Filed: 20/07/2001) THE roller-coaster career of Jeffrey Archer, politician, failed businessman and millionaire novelist, came to a dramatic halt yesterday when he was jailed for four years for lies he told in his libel action 14 years ago. After four days of deliberation, an Old Bailey jury convicted him unanimously of two charges of perjury and two of perverting the course of justice. He will initially serve his sentence at the high-security Belmarsh prison in south-east London. The judge, Mr Justice Potts, said the case was "the most serious offence of perjury I have experienced" and that he must serve at least two years. In the libel trial, Archer won a record £500,000 from the Daily Star over allegations that he slept with Monica Coghlan, a prostitute "willing to engage in perverted sexual practices". Yesterday the judge told him that if the libel jury had seen the evidence he had seen, "it is unlikely in the extreme you would have succeeded". The paper is demanding its money back, with damages and interest, totalling £2.2 million. The News of the World, which settled a separate libel action, is seeking repayment of £500,000. These demands, with Archer's own legal costs, could bring his total bill to more than £4 million. The judge appeared to question the evidence of Lady Archer, who accompanied her husband to court, as she had done throughout. As Nicholas Purnell, QC, pleading for Archer's freedom, said that his client had not compounded any lies told 14 years ago by evidence in the trial, the judge said: "What about the evidence of Lady Archer?" Police said later that they were considering whether to investigate Lady Archer's evidence. When the four guilty verdicts were given by the jury of six men and five women at 12.20pm, there were cries of "yes" from the public gallery. Archer and his wife remained motionless. He was cleared of a further charge of perverting the course of justice. His co-defendant, Ted Francis, a film producer, was acquitted of the one charge he faced: of perverting the course of justice by providing a false alibi for Archer for the night it was at one point said he had a £70 sex session with Miss Coghlan in a London hotel room. The judge said that Archer had been convicted on clear evidence. "Sentencing you, Lord Archer, gives me no pleasure at all, I can assure you. It has been an extremely distasteful case. "The fact is that in January 1987 you set out dishonestly to manipulate the proceedings that you had chosen to institute against the Star." It was Archer's ambition to be the first mayor of London that led to his conviction. Francis, an old friend with whom he had fallen out, went to the News of the World after the former Conservative deputy chairman had been selected as the party's candidate in the mayoral election. He told the paper that he had constructed a false alibi for him for the night in September 1986 that it was at first suggested he had been with Coghlan. He had originally agreed to this because he thought he was covering up a dinner date that Archer was keeping with his then mistress, Andrina Colquhoun. He realised only much later that the alibi was for the libel trial. Archer promised in return a £20,000 loan to help pay for a film Francis was hoping to make. The relationship between the two men cooled when, at one of Archer's vaunted Krug and shepherd's pie parties at his penthouse on the Embankment, he told another guest in Francis's hearing: "You want to watch this fellow. I lent him £20,000 and I'm still waiting for it to come back." At the libel trial, Francis's alibi was not needed in the end because of a mix-up over the dates of the sexual encounter. Instead, Terence Baker, Archer's agent, who has since died, said he had met the peer by chance on the crucial night and they had talked until well after the time the Star claimed that he had picked up Miss Coghlan in Shepherd Market. The criminal case revolved around a diary kept by Angela Peppiatt, Archer's personal assistant. Because Mrs Peppiatt's genuine diary of appointments listed a meeting with Mr Baker for the next night, Archer ordered her to make new entries in a blank diary. It was this diary which was used in the libel case. It has since disappeared. Worried about the dishonesty her employer had involved her in, Mrs Peppiatt kept her genuine diary as "an insurance" and handed it to police in 1999. During seven days in the witness box, Mrs Peppiatt was accused by Mr Purnell of faking the diary to cover up that she was fiddling her expenses. This she angrily denied. It was Lady Archer's evidence about the diary that was questioned by the judge. She said she remembered the main office diary for 1986 being of A4 size, whereas Mrs Peppiatt and another witness said it was smaller. Archer's involvement of Mrs Peppiatt drew particular criticism from the judge. He had drawn her in knowing that she had suffered a broken marriage and had children to support, he said. He ordered Archer, who will be able to retake his seat in the Lords when he is freed, to pay £175,000 towards prosecution costs with an extra year's jail in default. Lady Archer left the Old Bailey with her sons William, 29, and James, 27, without comment. But Tony Morton-Hooper, her husband's solicitor, said: "Lord Archer and his family are shocked and disappointed. We shall be lodging an appeal." Miss Coghlan, who was killed shortly before the trial when a robber crashed into her car, always maintained that the sex session Archer denied had taken place. She said: "I want him to suffer like I have suffered; I want him to squirm. But most of all I want him to tell the truth. I have never denied what I was; I was a prostitute. But I wasn't a liar. He is." |