Graham Greene's Brighton Rock is the tragic story of a murderer who marries an innocent girl, with the sole aim of preventing her giving evidence against him. Fact can be as strange as fiction—as the decision in R. (Crown Prosecution Service) v. Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages [2002] EWCA Civ 1661, [2003] 2 W.L.R. 504 dramatically shows.

Mr. J was the prime suspect for a brutal double murder. Miss B, his long-term cohabitee, made statements to the police which gave them crucial information. While J was in prison awaiting the trial in which Miss B was billed as the star prosecution witness, B first tried to retract her statement—and when this failed to persuade the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to remove her from the witness-list, J and B announced that they were getting married.