Barrister Says Dead Woman Was Put on Trial After Husband Acquitted of Manslaughter

A barrister has suggested that a dead woman was put on trial after a jury acquitted her husband of manslaughter and other charges related to allegations of abuse. Christopher Trybus, 44, was found not guilty by a jury of eight women and four men who deliberated for more than 40 hours.

He was acquitted of manslaughter, coercive and controlling behaviour and two counts of rape. The case was brought after his wife, Tarryn Baird, 34, took her own life in 2017. Prior to her death she had made allegations that Trybus had been abusive toward her.

Trybus denied all of the charges and said he had been unaware of his wife's allegations before she died. He told the court he felt bad that she was in such a place that she was saying these things. Trybus described the day Baird died as the worst day of his life.

Baird had lived with PTSD from witnessing violent incidents in South Africa, where the couple lived before moving to the UK, and had taken several prescription drug overdoses in the months before her death. Trybus told the court that he could not have caused some of the injuries Baird presented to doctors because he was not in the country at the time.

His defence argued that Baird had made false allegations because she was bored and lonely and had been desperately seeking help for her mental health issues. The defence said she may have become addicted to the attention that her allegations brought.

After the trial the barrister Charlotte Proudman criticised aspects of the defence's closing speech. The defence had questioned how Trybus was supposed to answer the allegations of a ghost from 10 years ago. It described the case as Kafkaesque and suggested the prosecution had an agenda.

Trybus's barrister Katy Thorne KC said the prosecution was totally obsessed with a dogma and that the whole case was based on an agenda that when women allege violence and domestic abuse they must be telling the truth. Proudman said she felt the comments meant that a dead woman was put on trial while the defendant faded into the background.

Thorne said Proudman's remarks did not accurately reflect what was said to the jury and showed a limited understanding of the facts of the case. She said Proudman, who practises family law, had not been in court to hear the evidence during the trial.

The defence also made a direct appeal to the men on the jury, saying they might feel very afraid now because if they enter into a relationship with a woman who makes allegations against them they will be prosecuted even if the allegations turn out to be untrue.

Proudman said the defence claimed there is an agenda to believe women by the criminal justice system when in fact it barely prosecutes rape and routinely retraumatises victims. She criticised the defence for telling male jurors to be afraid of false allegations, saying they were vanishingly rare and represented less than 2% of reports made.

In response Thorne said the trial was prosecuted by the most senior prosecutor in the country and presided over by a senior high court judge whose background is in discrimination law. She said had she said anything to the jury which was improper or did not reflect the evidence the prosecution and the judge would have objected.

They did not. Janaya Walker, the interim director of End Violence Against Women, said that many women were treated as suspects by the criminal justice system after dying by suicide. Walker said successive governments have taken action to address the fact that the criminal justice system and courts are often a site of harm and retraumatisation with high dropout rates and low prospects of justice.

A spokesperson for the Crown Prosecution Service said the agency respects the decision of the jury. The spokesperson said the jury had heard all the evidence and come to their verdicts. The CPS has yet to secure a conviction in a jury trial for manslaughter after a suspected suicide related to domestic abuse but has said it will consider bringing cases where there is evidence to do so.