Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, former DUP leader and current defendant in an 18-count sex abuse trial, has discovered a legal strategy that should not work but apparently needs to be litigated anyway: claiming that a letter he wrote expressing regret to an alleged victim had absolutely nothing to do with the allegations against him.
The court heard this week that Donaldson sent correspondence to someone accusing him of abuse. The letter contained expressions of regret. His defense team argued this was just casual regret—the kind of thing you write to people you’ve allegedly harmed when you want them to know you feel bad about things that definitely didn’t happen the way they say they did. Nothing to do with the allegations. Obviously.
The prosecution, apparently operating under the quaint assumption that letters expressing regret to abuse accusers might be relevant to a trial about abuse, disagreed. They presented this evidence as if it had something to do with the case. How pedestrian.
Donaldson has pleaded not guilty to all charges, which is his right. But the courtroom theater unfolding in Belfast suggests that somewhere between “I deny everything” and “here’s a heartfelt apology letter,” the defense strategy developed a small logical gap. The kind of gap you could drive an entire jury instruction through.
The former MP’s legal team is betting that jurors will accept a distinction most people would struggle to articulate: that you can write regretful correspondence to someone you allegedly abused without that correspondence having anything whatsoever to do with the abuse allegations. It’s the legal equivalent of sending flowers to someone and insisting the flowers are unrelated to the argument you didn’t have.
What makes this particularly generous is that Donaldson’s defense isn’t claiming the letters are fake, or that he didn’t write them, or even that the regret was about something else entirely. They’re simply asserting that the jury should understand regret letters in a context-free vacuum—floating free from the 18 charges, the rape allegation, and any connection to the person receiving them.
The trial continues. The prosecution will presumably keep introducing evidence. The defense will presumably keep explaining why that evidence means nothing. And somewhere in a Belfast courtroom, the concept of “relevance” is being tested in ways law school professors never anticipated.