guilty verdict on the count of murdering Morrell, the normal process would have been to bring the indictment regarding Mrs Hullett to trial—either a full trial or, in view of the acquittal in Mrs Morrell's case, a speedy one—so that Adams would plead not guilty. After such a plea, the Attorney-General would offer no evidence and the judge would direct the jury to bring in a not guilty verdict, which was the course Devlin expected. However the Attorney-General, as a minister of the Crown, had the power to suspend an indictment through a nolle prosequi, something which Devlin said had never been used to prevent an accused from an acquittal, suggesting this was done because Manningham-Buller did not want a second acquittal and adverse verdicts in both the cases he had indicted. Nolle prosequi could legitimately be used in cases to protect a guilty person granted immunity to turn Queen's evidence or to save the lives of the innocent, or sometimes on compassionate grounds. Devlin later referred to Manningham-Buller action as "an abuse of process", saying: "The use of nolle prosequi to conceal the deficiencies of the prosecution was an abuse of process, which left an innocent man under the suspicion that there might have been something in the talk of mass murder after all". Manningham-Buller later told Parliament after the Morrell trial that the publicity which attended the Morrell trial would make it difficult to secure a fair trial on the indictment relating to Mrs Hullett, and that the second case depended very greatly on inference, which was not supported by admissions, as in Mrs Morrell's case. This was a reference to Adams's admission that he had himself administered most of Mrs Morrell's opiate injections, whereas he had only said in his statements to the police that he had handed two barbiturate tablets to Mrs Hullett each day, and said nothing to link the total of barbiturates supplied to prescriptions he had issued. Claims of prejudice and political interference in the trial Cullen claimed that there was considerable evidence to suggest that the trial was "interfered with" by those "at the highest level", although the available evidence amounts at best to suspicion. For example, during the committal hearing for Adams in January 1957, Lord Goddard, the Lord Chief Justice, was seen dining with Sir Roland Gwynne (Mayor of Eastbourne from 1929 to 1931) and the Chairman of the local