Mark was born in County Durham in 1959 and now lives in West Yorkshire with his wife Ruth and son Charlie. A former industrial, and later community and youth, worker Mark now works as a freelance journalist, particularly for The Big Issue in the North magazine and the various publications of the trade union, Unite.

In 2012 he started editing the Yorkshire and Humber TUC Newsletter ‘Clocking On’ and he also regularly contributes articles to Tribune magazine.
Mark is becoming a prolific writer of football books with nine out in the last three and a half years, and three to follow in 2012. His long history of working on Miscarriage of Justice cases includes the Birmingham 6 and Guildford 4, Malcolm Kennedy:Patrick Quinn and Michael Stone. He has also actively participated in many Anti-Deportation campaigns.

During the 1990s, Mark was the co-ordinator of the Colin Roach Centre in Hackney for many years, where he helped organise numerous campaigns to defend the victims of police crime. Throughout the late 90s and early part of the 21st century Mark was the organiser of Sunderland Fans against Racism. He is an active and valued member of FIP.

www.markwrite.co.uk/htm
www.markwrite.co.uk/books.htm

Dave has a BSc degree with joint Honours in Chemistry and Zoology, and an MSc in Forensic Science and is a Fellow of the Forensic Science Society. He was a practising forensic scientist accredited by the UK Home Office as an authorised analyst from 1972, and from 1996 until he retired in 2005 was Head of Physical Evidence at the National Crime and Operations Faculty (NCOF), Bramshill.

NCOF is a UK wide organisation funded by the Police Service to provide expertise and operational support in the most complex crimes of violence such as rape series, stranger murders and the murders of children or vulnerable adults. During his NCOF duties Dave reviewed approximately 235 undetected murders or murder series in the UK and worldwide. It is now part of the National Police Improvement Agency.

His expertise consists of taking an overview of physical evidence in context with the work of behavioural investigative analysts (previously known as psychological or offender profilers), crime analysts and other evidence, assessing significance, and co-ordinating information from multiple sources. He undertook formal physical evidence reviews (finger-marks, pathologyand other forensic sciences) in several cases including the Soham murders, Sarah Payne, Milly Dowler, the Cardiff Five Miscarriage of Justice and the recent re-investigation of the World’s End murders in Scotland (1977). He was also responsible for determining and co-ordinating all the physical evidence activities in the Bloody Sunday Inquiry and the Omagh bomb investigation.

Dave has reviewed cases at the request of the authorities in the USA, Canada, Holland, Germany, Portugal, South Africa and many in Australia including the Claremont series of murders and the proven Miscarriage of Justice known as the ‘Andrew Mallard’ case (the murder of Pamela Lawrence, Perth 1994).

He has published and lectured extensively worldwide on these subjects, and has given keynote lectures at over 15 investigative, scientific or education conferences, and was the scientific advisor to the 2005 UK Parliamentary Select Committee on Forensic Science. Dave is on the Advisory Board of the International Homicide Investigators Association, an organisation funded by the US Government.

Dave is currently a senior lecturer at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Hull. Apart from his teaching post at Robert Gordon University Aberdeen, Dave provides consultancy services to UK police forces and defence solicitors in the assessment of physical evidence in context, with current (2010) cases including an undetected murder from the UK, and defence cases from Australia, the USA and the UK.

He has been involved as a scientific advisor or appeared in front of camera in a large number of science programmes (TV and radio) and in several investigative documentaries about high profile cases e.g. Dispatches ‘The Madeleine McCann Mystery’ shown on ITV.He recently appeared as a consultant for al Jazeera, commenting on the allegation that former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had been murdered by polonium poisoning.

On a more social note Dave is a keen trout fisherman and a Trustee of Wester Ross Fisheries Trust, the past Captain of Gairloch Golf Club (2005-2010), and played football (as a goalkeeper) and cricket for many years, ending up as a Grade A cricket umpire. We are delighted that he continues to help us and thank him for his previous contributions as our Trustee.

Called to the Bar in 1967 Michael Mansfield has a B.A. Hons.Degree in History and Philosophy from Keele University before turning to law. He soon earned the respect of colleagues, mounting vigorous defences for clients. He made his name in the Angry Brigade trial in the early 1970s before establishing Tooks Court Chambers in 1984. He took silk (became a Queen’s Counsel) in 1989.

Mansfield has never shied away from controversial cases, especially where civil liberties are at stake. He has been involved in high profile cases such as Barry George – wrongly convicted of the murder of television presenter Jill Dando. He has also represented the families of victims of the Bloody Sunday shootings at the inquiry into those deaths and the family of Jean Charles de Menezes the entirely innocent Brasilian electrician shot dead by police in 2005.

At inquests he represented the families of Tom Hurndall and James Miller – journalists murdered by the Israeli army. He also represented the families of the Omagh, Lockerbie and Dublin bombings. The relatives of victims of the Marchioness Disaster and families of the victims of the New Cross Fire were his clients. Mansfield represented striking miners at Orgreave and also the Newham Seven and Bradford Twelve – victims of racist attacks who defended themselves.

Mansfield has a magnificent track record in such cases. Mahmood Mattan was the last man to be executed in Cardiff. He was innocent, but hanged in 1952 for the murder of Lily Volpert. Forty-six years later Mansfield helped to clear his name on appeal. He was involved in the successful appeals of the Birmingham Six, Judith Ward, Annette Hewins, Harry Mackenny, M25 Three, Newsagent’s Three and Bridgewater Four.

Stephen Miller, one of the Cardiff Three was represented by Mansfield at his successful appeal in 1992. It later became the first case of vindication in Britain when the real killer Jeffrey Gafoor pleaded guilty in 2003 to the murder of Lynette White, which occurred fifteen years earlier. Had Mansfield represented Miller at trial one of Britain’s most notorious miscarriages of justice may have been avoided.

Michael Mansfield has written extensively in all major broadsheets and law journals and he has appeared in several documentaries. His books Presumed Guilty and the most recent Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer have been critically acclaimed. He is the President of Amicus, Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers and National Civil Rights Movement.He has also contributed the foreword to Sekar’s second bookThe Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt, which can be ordered at http://www.fittedinproject.org/books.html and fully supports the work of The Fitted-In Project.

Satish began working on justice issues in 1990, helping to set up human rights solidarity campaigns over the use of the death penalty in the Caribbean and the USA. His greatest success is the incredible case of the Cardiff Five (Yusef Abdullahi, Stephen Miller, Tony Paris and the cousins John and Ronnie Actie). His work contributed to the successful appeal of the Cardiff Three in December 1992 (the Actie cousins were acquitted two years earlier).

Unlike most campaigners and journalists, he saw the need to find the real killer and continued investigating, often alone, to achieve that and then secure meaningful changes in the system that had miscarried so badly. Along with Lynette’s mother the late Peggy Pesticcio, he then persuaded the authorities to look for the real killer, by re-opening the case for the first time in 1995. His first book Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry was published by us in 1998 and had a great impact.

The case continued to make history as it was re-opened for the second time a year later, following important developments in policing and forensic science. Mainstream media had ignored this case almost totally since the successful appeals. This helped to convince him and colleagues that the work of The Fitted-In Project was far from over.

The real murderer Jeffrey Gafoor was caught and punished on July 4th 2003 after a superb investigation and the use of novel techniques in DNA testing.This was the first time a miscarriage of justice had been resolved in Britain by the conviction of the real murderer in the DNA age. Three alleged eyewitnesses against the Cardiff Five were convicted of perjury in October 2008 and jailed for 18 months two months later. Within four months 13 serving or retired police officers and two more witnesses were told that they would face trial for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The trial of the witnesses and eight officers collapsed in controversial circumstances in December 2011. The remaining defendants were formally acquitted a week later.

Satish was the only journalist in the world who was subjected to reporting restrictions that prevented him alone from attending the trial and working on it. It also affected our projects and activities adversely. He continues to highlight the flaws in this extraordinary case previously as our Director and now CEO of The Fitted-In Project. He has worked on several other successful cases. These include the Tamil Two (Samuel Kulsaingham and Premaraj Sivalingham), Raphael Rowe and Michael Davis of the M25 Three, Gary Mills and Tony Poole and the Taylor Sisters (Michelle and Lisa).

Satish has researched several miscarriage of justice cases. These include the Cardiff Five, Gary Mills and Tony Poole, the Newsagent’s Three and currently the extraordinary case of Neil Sayers. (For further information on Sayers’ case see the folder Forensic Science & Miscarriages of Justice). He has also researched issues of after-care for victims of miscarriage of justice, an ignored failing in the tariff system, the use of sport in after-care and also crime prevention.

Satish has worked in television, film and radio, including In the Name of the Father, BBC1’s Panorama and Channel Four’s Trial And Error. His on camera appearances include BBC2’s Black Ink and Channel 4 News. His work on radio consists of Radio 4’s Beyond Reasonable Doubt (Series), You And Yours, Today, Law In Action, among others. Print media work includes articles for The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The Express, Private Eye, The Western Mail, The Guardian Online and The Times Online. He has also written two books and contributed  a chapter to two more.

Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry, published by The Fitted-In Project (1998).

The Criminal Cases Review Commission : Hope for the Innocent, edited by Michael Naughton, published by Palgrave Macmillan (2012) Chapter 6 The Failure of the Review of the Possible Wrongful Convictions Caused by Michael Heath by Satish Sekar p77-96.

The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt, published by Waterside Press (2012)

NO DEFENCE: lawyers and miscarriages of justice, edited by Jon Robbins, published by the Justice Gap and the Solicitors’ Journal (2013) The Suspension of Disbelief by Satish Sekar p28-31.

He was the Founder and chief feature writer of the Fitted-In Journal and also Empower-Sport Magazine. He now writes occasionally for EmpowerS Magazine Satish is the Director of The Fitted-In Project (now CEO) and also Empower-Sport Ltd. (Empower-Sport Ltd has charitable status for tax purposes) both of which are not for profit companies limited by guarantee. Satish has also guest lectured at Lincoln University, Nottingham Trent University, Portsmouth University and Staffordshire University. He conducted a Working Breakfast (conference) at the prestigious Tequendama Hotel in Bogotá, Colombia for the Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses (see http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=87). Clients of his consultancy work includes Ken Livingstone (then Mayor of London) on police reform, police complaints mechanisms and DNA data-basing, the renowned solicitors Gareth Peirce and Steven Bird. He also worked for Birnberg/Peirce and Magrath & Co. on the case of the Newsagent’s Three (Michael O’Brien, Ellis Sherwood and Darren Hall) and The Sherlock Holmes Museum.

He has a wide range of interests that include history, current affairs, travel, films, reading, writing (fiction), football, cricket, handball, forensic science and legal issues.

Expertise

• Consultancy on forensic science issues in case of Neil Sayers for Steven Bird – funding was approved by Legal Services Commission.
• Recommendations included ground breaking experiments to prove whether maggots could have survived the fire. Legal aid was granted for these experiments to be conducted. The experiments were conducted successfully in Valencia in 2009. Recommendations also included further research on forensic pathology and DNA to be conducted by renowned experts in 2012.
• Consultancy on scientific issues in the case of Michael Stone.
• Consultancy on miscarriages of justice in South Wales
• DNA, including data-basing
• Forensic Pathology
• Fire-related Issues & Forensic entomology

For reasons that we have made clear the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s (IPCC) investigation and that of the HMCPSI are hopelessly flawed. The terms of reference of both investigations are limited to the collapse of the trial that ended controversially in December 2011. This is grossly inadequate as it completely ignores the causes that resulted in these investigations – the original miscarriage of justice that befell the Cardiff Five.

The CPS has refused to answer our legitimate inquiries into why it prosecuted the Cardiff Five in spite of its own Code for Crown Prosecutors establishing that this was never a credible case for prosecution, for over 15 years. It tells us to wait an unspecified period for it to conclude an investigation that will not address these issues. It has never reviewed its decision to prosecute even though it was obliged to do so. Its conduct throughout this case is indefensible. But its flawed practices are open to scrutiny.

Its role in this case and concerns over it resulted in our project Unfit for Purpose – The Safeguards Fail. It has refused to lodge a complaint about its practices and failures, insisting on the HMCPSI investigation being completed first. The Attorney General supports this decision, refusing to record a complaint about the inordinate delays. Its process will result in further delays aimed at preventing the serious failure of the CPS to follow its own guidelines being addressed until it is too late, which is their intention.

Similarly, the Bar Council and Law Society refuse to review the failures of its members in this case. The judiciary have not looked at its failures either. The scientific failures by the Forensic Science Service were reviewed by that organisation before it was closed by the government, but that report has never been made available to the public, largely because of the failed prosecution.

South Wales Police have reviewed the force’s failures in the Lynette White Inquiry twice. The Hacking Report was concluded in September 2000. It produced 107 recommendations. Police claim some have been implemented, but over a decade later not one recommendation has been published. The other investigation resulted in the failed trial. There has never been an independent review of the Lynette White Inquiry even though it is plain that it is sorely needed, but the form it should take is open to debate.

A Novel Solution

The concept of a public inquiry has been discredited by the Saville Inquiry into the events on Bloody Sunday. That inquiry dragged on for years and cost a fortune, but the only obligation on government in such cases is to hold a public inquiry even if that process has been rendered utterly inappropriate and inadequate. The government has the discretion to order one if it chooses to, but can only be compelled if there has been a breach of Article 2 or 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

The Fitted-In Project recognises that the Lynette White Inquiry remains a difference-making case – one that is capable of resulting in the root and branch change necessary to correct and preferably prevent justice miscarrying. But to achieve that potential there must be an independent inquiry that is open to the public. It must be chaired by a judge or retired judge and have powers to compel attendance from witnesses. The aim of such an inquiry is to inform and enlighten rather than to avenge. It has made history several times and is surely worthy of such a review, especially after the fortune that has been wasted without accountability or redress. Where else could public resources be wasted in such an unaccountable fashion without any consequences at all?

We therefore propose innovative solutions to the problems raised by this case and others through our projects and activities (see Projects and Activities). This is a difference-making case that must be allowed to achieve its potential in order to benefit society as only it can. That requires an independent and impartial judicial inquiry into what wrong and how it can be prevented from happening again or alternatively a Truth and Justice Commission (TJC) with powers to compel attendance and where appropriate grant amnesty. The TJC is our preference.

Over 25 years after the Sadistic murder of Lynette White, it must now be clear that even with a change of approach in the higher ranks of South Wales Police, the force cannot put their house in order and nor should the rest of the criminal justice system be trusted to do so. Only the solutions we advocate can achieve that and foster the root and branch change required to deliver justice to all concerned.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) was called in to investigate the police’s role if any in the collapse of the trial by South Wales Police. Simultaneously, the Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer ordered an investigation of the CPS’s role. He eventually instructed Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) to establish why the prosecution failed. The terms of reference of both investigations are limited to the failure of that trial. We are very concerned about this.

Neither investigation is concerned with the events that caused the trial in the first place – events that began over 24 years ago. South Wales Police made no secret that they did not want a Public Inquiry into this case or any other and the failed process was designed to prevent it.

Ironically, the collapsed trial is helping to achieve that end, aided by the surviving members of the Cardiff Five and their current lawyers, who are judicially reviewing the Home Secretary’s decision not to order a public inquiry into the collapse of the trial while the IPCC and HMCPSI investigations are being conducted. There is no time-frame for either investigation to conclude.

Avoidance of Responsibility
South Wales Police, the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) and IPCC refuse to comment on the Lynette White Inquiry while these inquiries continue. This has been going on for more than a decade, preventing discussion and independent review of one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in British history. It has been almost a quarter of a century without independent and adequate review of the causes of a miscarriage that can still change the criminal justice to the benefit of all. This was why our CEO Satish Sekar refused to co-operate, predicting that both inquiries would not establish why justice had miscarried.

The numerous failures of the criminal justice system in that case – one that could have prevented the miscarrying of justice in many others – still have not been addressed. Assurances that some recommendations which have never been published, have been implemented will not suffice – ever. The lessons remain ignored despite numerous public officials failing to do the jobs they had been appointed to do. The quest for accountability remains unfulfilled and an investigative process that promised much has wasted £30m of taxpayers’ resources without delivering justice to anyone or accountability either. It must never be allowed to happen again.

Despite the failure of the police to investigate themselves, the current investigations provide more of the same. The lessons remain unlearned; the bill to the public increases and still there is no accountability or sign of it. There are still many lessons to be learned and not just from that case. Vindication was essential to establish this opportunity, which has been wasted, but still it offers great potential, which we are developing through our projects and activities and by refusing to taint ourselves by involving ourselves in grossly tainted procedures.

Continue to Exceptional Injustice P.7

Four months after the New Cardiff Three were sent to jail – the second miscarriage of justice in the same case – the Crown Prosecution Service’s Special Crimes Department announced that 13 police officers – three of whom were still serving at the time – would face trial for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Rachel O’Brien was found to be medically unfit to stand trial. Two further witnesses, Ian Massey and Violet Perriam, were charged with two counts of perjury.

The trials were severed – Wayne Pugh, John Murray, John Bryan Gillard and Stephen Hicks were due to be tried in 2012, but thanks to the deeply flawed reasoning of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) that trial would never take place. The whole process was fatally flawed. It was set up to fail and did.

The Police Corruption Trial as it was called did not start for two years. Graham Mouncher, Richard Powell and Thomas Page were the most senior officers to be defendants in that trial. The other police defendants were John Seaford, Peter Greenwood, Paul Stephen, Paul Jennings and Michael Daniels.

The trial of eight police and the two witnesses began on July 4th 2011 – eight years to the day after Jeffrey Gafoor’s guilty plea made this process necessary. The defence outrageously claimed that the Cardiff Five were actually guilty of Lynette’s White Sadistic murder despite their vindication. The trial judge (Mr Justice Sweeney) allowed this in spite of evidence proving them innocent.

Almost 20 years earlier the Court of Appeal, headed by the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Taylor did not want to hear evidence relating to the prime suspect Mr X, because there wasn’t evidence proving him guilty. The CPS had credible evidence available that destroyed the credibility of this outrageous defence. Professor Dave Barclay had reviewed the scientific evidence and concluded that it amply demonstrated that it was scientifically ludicrous to claim that five men and between two to four alleged eyewitnesses had been present when Lynette was murdered. Barclay explains his reasoning in my second book The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt.

The attempt to establish what had gone wrong ended unsatisfactorily as the court was wrongly assured that documents had been deliberately shredded. In fact, they had not been. On December 1st 2011 the trial in Swansea Crown Court collapsed.

Unfinished Business

The attempt to put right what South Wales Police had got wrong had ended in abject failure. It raised issues of whether police, especially the same force that had got it wrong, could ever be relied on to put things right. Regardless of whether this was a sincere attempt to do that or not, it ended in failure and police procedures undoubtedly played a part. We observed this and the developments that followed with concern.

Unusually in a trial process, there was a rush to acquit. Documents had allegedly been shredded, but there was no actual proof that they had been when the trial collapsed. It relied on the vague recollections of a police officer – the Disclosure Officer – and his hearsay assurances to another officer that this had been done.

Those assurances were taken at face value and the CPS threw in the towel without even establishing that this had definitely happened. It would later emerge that nothing of the sort had happened. However, the CPS had made a mockery of disclosure obligations despite being aware that this would be the defence strategy.

After Sweeney had acquitted all the defendants, including those due to stand trial later, the allegedly shredded documents turned up in the possession of South Wales Police in the very boxes that they had been sent in. It was far too late, but it proved one thing beyond doubt – the criminal justice system is incapable of puting right what it got wrong in miscarriage of justice cases and should never be trusted to attempt to do so again.

Continue to Exceptional Injustice P.6

Duress – A Legal Quagmire
Mark Grommek, Angela Psaila and Learnne Vilday (the New Cardiff Three) were told that they had a responsibility to tell the truth and should have reported what had been done to them. The prosecutor, Nicholas Dean QC, said that they had time to tell before the committal hearing and trials, but who should they have told? Vilday had tried more than once to tell the truth. Each time she was brought back into line. Psaila tried as well and she too was brought back into line. Grommek stuck rigidly to the script, although he fought his corner on duress hardest of all. They plainly believed that they had no choice but to lie and Vilday at least had indeed tried to tell the truth as Dean and the CPS had demanded. It did her no good.

These witnesses were being looked after by police officers who had not been involved in the original inquiry. They also had access to court officials before giving evidence. According to their prosecutors they should have told the truth to either those police officers or the officials of the court. This took no account of the psychological trauma they had suffered and also the legal and political climate of the time.

What would have happened if they had done precisely what Dean demanded of them? An investigation would have followed, which would have been their word against the police they accused of bullying them without the certain knowledge we now have that they had indeed been lying about the guilt of the Cardiff Five. What was the likelihood of them being believed?

In March 1990 Alban Turner, wrongly convicted of murdering Michael Galvin at the 1987 Notting Hill Carnival was freed on appeal. The star witness Kevin Sarbutts had retracted, alleging serious police malpractice. The now defunct Police Complaints Authority (PCA) investigated those allegations. His lies against Turner, which he admitted to, were never investigated. Sarbutts was convicted by a jury that asked for him to be treated leniently. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

A Dangerous Precedent

If they had told the truth earlier they would almost certainly have shared the fate of Sarbutts. His complaint to the PCA was used to prosecute him for perjury, but not in relation to his self-confessed lies about Turner. He was prosecuted and convicted of perjury in 1994 for his claims of police malpractice. If the New Cardiff Three had told the truth between December 1988 and November 1990, they would in all probability have gone to jail then and for longer, but for what they said about the police – the very things Mr Justice Maddison’s court accepted were true.

Vilday and Psaila pleaded guilty when told they would be sentenced on one count rather than the three they were charged with. Grommek elected to be tried, pending a decision on whether duress could be a defence to perjury. Mr Justice Maddison eventually decided that duress was no defence to perjury, so Grommek changed his plea to guilty. He had been left with no choice, but he was left with the three counts. They were convicted due to the laws on duress to perjury charges and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment each, despite the judge branding police conduct to them as: “unacceptable in a civilised society”.

Another Miscarriage of Justice

They now want their convictions quashed and a public inquiry. But this requires a change in the law. If what happened to them does not count as duress, then the law is wrong. The unacceptable conduct resulted in statements containing a perjury warning, but it had the opposite effect to that intended by those who drafted that law. Instead of preventing perjury it led inexorably to the evidence they were forced to give. They had no realistic choice but to do as they did back then – perjure themselves.

20 years later they were prosecuted for doing what they were forced to. The criminal justice system accepts that they have now told the truth about what was done to them in 1988, but the law offers them no remedy, just a criminal conviction – the only people held legally accountable for the miscarriage of justice that befell the Cardiff Five.

On any normal definition of the term the New Cardiff Three are victims of a shameful miscarriage of justice – one that offers a stark warning of what will happen even if witnesses have compelling proof that they were forced into perjuring themselves. Meanwhile, the officers whose conduct was branded ‘unacceptable in a civilised society’ were told that they would face trial – a trial that would later collapse in farcical circumstances.

Continue to Exceptional Injustice P.5

A Deeply Flawed Process
We had hoped that the inquiry into what went wrong, which began in July 2003, would mean that our task had been completed. There was a lot of material to go through and the whole process took over eight years only to end in abject failure. Thirty-four people involved in that case – 20 were serving or retired police officers – were arrested and interviewed under caution on suspicion of offences including perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. South Wales Police insisted on conducting the investigation themselves. This was a preventable error. If anything went wrong, which it did, the failure would be blamed on them whether it was their fault or not.

The IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) became involved in 2004 and later the (CPS) Crown Prosecution Service were consulted too. The CPS’s Serious Crimes Department eventually decided which of the 34 would face trial and who would not. Despite only taking silk recently (becoming a Queen’s Counsel) recently Nicholas Dean was appointed to lead the prosecutions. The CPS has never explained why it chose such a comparatively inexperienced QC to lead such important prosecutions.

In 2007 it decided to prosecute the so-called core witnesses – the alleged eye-witnesses – first. Paul Atkins was deemed unfit to stand trial, which left Mark Grommek, Angela Psaila and Learnne Vilday to stand trial on three counts of perjury which began on October 17th 2008. This decision was tactically inept and would have huge consequences later. It would lead to a miscarriage of justice – the second in the same case. It would also demonstrate the fundamental unfairness of the laws on duress – a defence which was denied to these defendants even though everyone present at their trial including judge, jury and prosecution accepted that they had been bullied into making those statements by the police.

The Fruit of the Poisoned Tree

Unlike many The Fitted-In Project saw the injustice of what was happening at the time and our CEO Satish Sekar immediately highlighted it in the Fitted-In Journal. The CPS had used the system and law well – cynically in fact. Prosecuting the three witnesses meant that it could not be accused of favouring them, but there was a problem and their lawyers knew it. Their statements and testimony had been studded with inconsistencies and lies and this had been glaringly obvious for 20 years.

These were the very lies that established them as prosecution witnesses against the Cardiff Five. They had been boxed in to commit perjury by these statements. Surely, the way the statements had been obtained was relevant, or at least it should have been.

They had told the same story – the truth for several months in 1988 – until ‘conduct unacceptable in a civilised society’ turned them into prosecution witnesses in November and December 1988. Once those statements were made – the CPS belatedly accepted that these were extracted under duress – they were trapped, knowing that if they deviated from them they could be prosecuted. Now, without trace of irony in the CPS, they were prosecuted for telling the very lies they had been forced to tell.

The CPS knew that it needed to avoid charging them over those statements, as it was part of their case that these witnesses had indeed been bullied and hectored and subjected to treatment that disgraced the criminal justice system. They were charged over the committal hearings and both trials of the Cardiff Five, but not over their statements. That was deliberate, as the Crown would claim that they had ample opportunity to tell the truth after they had been bullied, but did they?

There was no doubt that these witnesses had lied both in their crucial statements and in evidence at the committal hearing of the Cardiff Five and two trials. The questions that needed answering were why and whether they had any free choice in their actions? This was in fact the classic example of the fruit of the poisoned tree and contributed to yet another miscarriage of justice – something we highlighted when our CEO dubbed them the ‘New Cardiff Three’.

To prosecute people for telling lies that prosecuting authorities accept they were forced to tell is grossly unfair to put it mildly and to deny them access to the clearest proof that they too were victims of scandalous conduct denied them their right to a fair trial.

Continue to Exceptional Injustice P.4

The murder of 20-year-old Lynette White in the early hours of Valentine’s Day 1988 was a particularly horrific murder. At the time it was the most brutal murder of its type in Welsh history. She sustained more than fifty stab wounds. Her throat was slit to the spine; there were obvious sexual elements to the murder as the killer was seeking sex with a prostitute, went equipped with a knife, knowing that he might use it and did so. He savagely attacked her breasts and chest as well. Jeffrey Gafoor was that man. He had no criminal record at that time, claiming that the Sadistic murder was over a meagre £30.

When we published Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry, (buy the books) the Cardiff Three (Yusef Abdullahi, Stephen Miller and Tony Paris) had been free for more than five years, but the lessons had yet to be learned – sadly they still haven’t been, hence the continued need for The Fitted-In Project. The cousins John and Ronnie Actie had been free even longer, but who would fight for justice for Lynette White? Mainstream media quickly lost interest – never seeing the bigger picture. They still don’t and sadly nor do many others. We believed that it was necessary to vindicate the Cardiff Five – prove them innocent beyond any doubt by finding and convicting the real killer. Vindicating them would demonstrate how much had gone wrong and the need for the system to change profoundly – root and branch – to reduce the risk of justice miscarrying at the very least.It was therefore essential that the Cardiff Five be vindicated if this exceptional case was to achieve its potential to change the criminal justice system.

Within a year the Lynette White Inquiry was re-opened for the second time (May 1999). This time attitudes in South Wales Police had changed considerably, at least with reference to this case. From being their most vociferous critic about the Lynette White Inquiry, our CEO Satish Sekar became part of the solution that police sought. They wanted to convince him, among others, that they were genuine and intended to solve the murder. In September 2000 the police announced that they would commit resources to DNA testing and that a new team led by Detective Superintendent Kevin O’Neill would investigate Lynette’s murder.

Exceptional and Historic

Following exceptional scientific work especially by our Forensic Science Consultant Professor Dave Barclay vital DNA samples were recovered from the murder scene nearly fifteen years after Lynette’s untimely death. O’Neill’s investigation was a model investigation, combining modern investigative techniques with the latest forensic science techniques. Innovative use of the National DNA Database enabled police to unmask the true killer.

On July 4th 2003 Jeffrey Gafoor pleaded guilty to the murder of Lynette White. It was the first time in British history that a miscarriage of justice had been resolved by the conviction of the truly guilty in Britain in the DNA age. We are honoured to have been part of that process and see the potential to correct other miscarriages of justice and hopefully help to prevent others from happening. The then Chief Constable of South Wales Police, Sir Anthony Burden, took the unprecedented step of apologising to the victims of the miscarriage of justice and Lynette’s family too. He then ordered an investigation into what had gone wrong, which began on July 7th under Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Coutts, who has since retired.

The vindication of the Cardiff Five was a very important step in the development of our projects and activities (see Projects and Activities). Sekar’s latest book The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt details how that vindication occurred and its aftermath (buy the book). They are no longer the only people to have been vindicated in Britain through advances in DNA testing systems.

Continue to Exceptional Injustice P.3