But in a reversal of fortune laced with Jeffrey Archer-like plotlines of ambition, deceit and revenge, their world collapsed about them. Ultimately, their story was one that doomed their marriage and their reputations — and left them, after a trial that ended Thursday before a high court judge, facing the probability that both will go to prison for several months, and possibly longer.
After two trials and more than 25 hours of jury deliberations, Vicky Pryce, a Greek-born economist who agreed in 2003 to falsely name herself as the driver in a speeding offense committed by her husband, Chris Huhne, was found guilty on a unanimous jury vote of perverting the course of justice.
The BBC reported that Ms. Pryce, 60, met the verdict by gulping silently before leaving the court, on bail until her sentencing, without talking to the waiting reporters and television crews.
The judge in the case, Sir Nigel Sweeney, warned Ms. Pryce that she should have “no illusions” about the sentence likely to be imposed, a phrase commonly used to warn of a prison term. Justice Sweeney gave the same warning last month to Mr. Huhne, 58, when he averted a trial with a last-minute plea of guilty to the same charge, after years of calling rumors about the speeding ticket switch “nonsense” and “lies.”
Switching identities in speeding cases involving roadside police cameras is something the police say many thousands of people in Britain do each year. For Mr. Huhne, with three previous speeding convictions in the year before the 2003 episode, the penalty points would have brought a driving ban and, by his estimation at the time, according to court testimony, could have cost him his bid to win a parliamentary seat in 2005 and switch his political career to Britain from Brussels, where he had been a member of the European Parliament.
Ultimately, though, the gamble could hardly have been more costly. Had he pleaded guilty at the time, he would have faced a $100 fine and been barred from driving for six months to a year; by lying in the case, he ultimately lost his cabinet post, the first politician in British history to be forced from office by a criminal prosecution, as well as his parliamentary seat, and, British pundits say, any prospect of a future political career.
The might-have-beens in the case helped keep it in the headlines. Had thousands of absentee ballots in his favor not been delayed in the mail, Mr. Huhne would probably have won the leadership of the Liberal Democrats in 2007, instead of losing narrowly to his chief rival, Nick Clegg. A leadership win would then have made him deputy prime minister to David Cameron, a post now held by Mr. Clegg, when the Liberals joined Mr. Cameron’s Conservatives in a coalition government in 2010.
But it has been the venomous personal vendetta, more than the politics of the case, that has transfixed many in Britain. Ms. Pryce stuck with the deceit over the speeding ticket for more than seven years until Mr. Huhne, faced with the imminent exposure of an extramarital affair with one of his political aides by a London tabloid, abruptly walked out of the 25-year marriage.
The court heard that Ms. Pryce learned the news from her husband when he confronted her during a halftime break in a Saturday-afternoon telecast of a World Cup soccer match in 2010, announcing that he needed an immediate separation to save his cabinet post.
Ms. Pryce testified in court that he had bullied her into accepting the speeding ticket, and said she had had no choice but to sign a court summons after Mr. Huhne, without consulting her, identified her as the driver in his response to the original summons. Pleading “marital coercion,” a rarely used defense in British courts, her lawyer cast her as a deeply vulnerable woman, keen to protect her marriage and her five children. He said she was accustomed to yielding to the overbearing demands of Mr. Huhne, who she said demanded on two occasions that she have abortions so as not to disrupt his career with additional children.
That defense, however, which won broad support among female newspaper columnists and women’s rights groups in Britain, appeared to have made little impact on the jury in the trial (a previous trial last month ended with a hung jury). In finding Ms. Pryce guilty, the jurors, seven men and five women, appeared to have accepted the version put forward by the prosecution counsel, Andrew Edis, who described Ms. Pryce in court as a “strong-willed person” who had been prepared to “cheat the system” with Mr. Huhne until a desire for revenge over his deserting the marriage took over.
Evidence at the trial showed that Ms. Pryce had gone to two newspapers, The Mail on Sunday and The Sunday Times, with accounts of the ticket switch and avowals of her eagerness to end Mr. Huhne’s political career. A Sunday Times article based on her account, and on telephone conversations it recorded in which she tried to get Mr. Huhne to confess to the ticket scam, led to the police inquiry and the trials. The truth, Mr. Edis said, was that Ms. Pryce was “a woman who spent her life making important choices,” though she had contended in court that “she was unable to choose whether to commit a crime or not because a man, whether her husband or no, was telling he what she had to do.”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/world/europe/vicky-pryce-and-chris-huhnes-slide-from-the-top.html?partner=rss&emc=rss