A charge against Mark Gordon, a rapist convicted of the manslaughter of his newborn with his partner Constance Marten, for failing to report to police while on the sex offenders’ register has been dropped.
Gordon was accused of failing to comply with notification requirements between 3 January and 27 February 2023, when the couple were on the run.
He pleaded not guilty after the prosecution said it would offer no evidence and it was no longer in the public interest to pursue the charge given his other convictions.
Gordon, 51, and Marten, 38, will be sentenced next month for the manslaughter by gross negligence of their daughter, Victoria, after a lengthy and chaotic retrial earlier this year.
The first trial had found the couple guilty of concealing the birth of a child, perverting the course of justice by not reporting her death and of child cruelty.
They will be sentenced on 15 September – more than two years after Victoria’s decomposed body was discovered in a shopping bag in Brighton.
It is thought that the couple went on the run to avoid the authorities and keep Victoria, their fifth child together, after their four other children had been taken into care.
Gordon had allegedly failed to regularly report to police as a registered offender after he was found guilty of rape in the US in 1989. He had served 20 years in prison before he was deported back to the UK.
At a hearing at the Old Bailey on Monday, Judge Mark Lucraft KC told Gordon that the case would be dropped if he pleaded not guilty.
Gordon asked the judge if he could have five minutes, during which he squatted in a corner of the video link room at HMP Belmarsh and appeared to debate with himself.
When he returned, he told the court: “How else could I plead?
“Of course ‘not guilty’ is the plea.”
Gordon – who was not represented by a lawyer at the end of the retrial related to Victoria’s death – also told the court he was still having trouble finding a solicitor for the sentencing hearing in September.
“Potentially owing to the negative publicity of this case people are reluctant to take this case on,” he said.
“I’m not up to the challenge of representing myself. I do not know the law. It’s too much for me to do. I cannot do it.”
But Judge Lucraft refused to delay and said the case, which ran over two long-running trials, had already been “hugely expensive”.
“The boot is on your foot to get representation,” he told him, adding that the court “will proceed to sentence even if you are unrepresented”.
