Anne Darwin took a different course. She did not plead guilty. She contested the charges at trial. Her defence was that she had been coerced by her husband—that John Darwin was a domineering, bullying figure who had imposed the fraud scheme upon her and that her participation had been compelled rather than chosen.
The coercion defence is a recognizable strategy in cases where partners are jointly charged and one seeks to minimize their culpability by blaming the other. Whether it accurately describes a situation depends entirely on the facts of that situation, and juries are the instruments through which that determination is made.
The jury was shown the emails. The communications between John and Anne Darwin during the years of the scheme did not suggest a woman terrorized into compliance. They suggested a couple planning a new life together, in an ordinary register, discussing practical matters and expressing affection. This is not definitive—relationships can contain coercion alongside affection, and demonstrating control is not always demonstrated by the absence of affection in correspondence. But the emails were inconsistent enough with the picture Anne’s defence was drawing that they became a significant obstacle to her acquittal.
Anne Darwin was convicted after trial on July 23, 2008. She was convicted of six counts of obtaining property by deception and nine counts related to money laundering—specifically to transferring, converting, and using criminal property. The jury rejected her coercion defence.
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## The Sentences
On July 23, 2008—the same day Anne was convicted—Mr. Justice Wilkie sentenced both defendants at Teesside Crown Court.