He said in interview, Mr. Park did, that he had been doing his best at the time. Well, Members of the Jury, you must decide whether the defendant did in fact deliberately tell lies. He denies telling lies, and if you are not sure that he lied on one or more of those matters, well, ignore the alleged lie or lies. If you are sure there was a lie, there is another question to be asked, why did he do so? Of course the mere fact that someone tells a lie is not necessarily evidence of the guilt of the offence charged. The defendant may lie for innocent reasons, in the sense that the lie does not indicate guilt. For example, people sometimes lie to bolster what in fact are true defences. They lie to conceal discreditable conduct of other types, short of commission of the offence of which the court is concerned. They may lie out of distress of panic. In this case Mr. Park said there were not any lies, or if there was inaccuracies in answer to the police it was not deliberate, and either his recollection has changed or he was doing his best to answer the questions but simply got the facts wrong, or you heard other reliable evidence which made him change his mind. If you think that there is or may be an innocent explanation for any lie that you found he told, do not take any notice of them. It is only if you are sure that he did lie, he did not lie, I am sorry, for an innocent reason that the lie or lies can be regarded as evidence supporting the prosecution case.
Now I am going to turn to the quite separate points about the lie that Mr. Park admitted he told to the Magistrates' in Middlesborough in 1975 about the nature of his relationship with Mrs. Walmsley. He admits that he lied on that occasion. He said he did so to hide his adultery and so as not to prejudice his case in the custody proceedings. The fact that he lied about that of course, as I am sure you appreciate, does not mean he is lying about the present matter, but it is a matter you are entitled to take into account when you assess his overall credibility.