Fiona Onasanya Retrial

A few days ago the retrial of Fiona Onasanya, the Labour MP for Peterborough, got underway at the Central Criminal Court in London.

Onasanya, 35, stands accused of perverting the course of justice. The Crown alleges that she was clocked by a camera exceeding the speed limit, but dishonestly named an unrelated third-party as the driver of the vehicle so as to avoid punishment. If you search our earlier posts you'll find a bit more background to this most fascinating of cases.

In November the jury in the first trial was discharged after failing reach a majority verdict. Normal convention is for the Crown Prosecution Service to seek a retrial if it believes there are evidential and public interest merits in doing so. Second retrials are virtually unheard of, so should this jury fail to reach a verdict the CPS will almost certainly abandon the prosecution.

We are now three days into the trial and the prosecution is winding up its case. Key prosecution witness Dr Christian DeFeo, who is Onasanya's former campaign manager, has repeated his earlier evidence that the newly-elected MP spent several hours at his home on the evening her vehicle was clocked by a nearby speed camera.

Under cross-examination the defence put it to Dr DeFeo that he was a tad too enthusiastic in "catching out" Onasanya, thereby implying there is some ulterior motive in his evidence. Dr DeFeo replied that he had no wish to see Onasanya go to prison, but had a moral duty to do the right thing by coming forward.

Jurors were shown screenshots of Facebook messages between Dr DeFeo and his wife, Caroline Earle, as they tried to piece together the movements of Onasanya on the night in question.

The prosecution has presented cell site data confirming that both of Onasanya's phones were in the locality of the speed camera at the time it was triggered.

Prosecution witness Martin Griffiths, a telecommunications expert, told the jury that cell site data could be used to ascertain the general location of a user's mobile phone at a particular time. Based on the information available to him he was able to ascertain that Onasanya's phones were east of the village of Eye, Cambridgeshire (e.g. west of the village of Thorney) at the time the speed camera was triggered.

The trial resumes at 10 am on Monday morning.

High Court Judge Sir Jeremy Stuart-Smith is presiding.