My latest book Trials and Tribulations – Innocence Matters is available to order through FIP. Our next publication will be Bad Form – How Tariffs Protect the Guilty and Punish the Innocent. It will detail the issues I discuss in the video in greater detail.

https://www.facebook.com/satish.sekar.3/videos/1376131822491496/

Anniversary

Thirteen years ago today Jeffrey Gafoor made history. Gafoor pleaded guilty to the murder of Lynette White. She was the victim of what was then (February 14th 1988) the most brutal murder of its type in Welsh history. Faced with overwhelming evidence Gafoor admitted that he had murdered Lynette. He had provided samples for DNA testing before attempting to take his own life in February 2003. Police officers from the Lynette White Inquiry Phase II saved his life.

Phase II was one of the best investigations ever. Led by Detective Chief Superintendent Kevin O’Neill, these officers and the forensic scientists, did a fantastic job. They knew that finding the real killer would come at a huge price to the force. No British police force had ever resolved a miscarriage of justice by convicting the real killer in the DNA age. Any force that did so knew that it would unleash a can of worms, the like of which British policing had never faced before. But still, they investigated doggedly and continued until they made history by bringing Gafoor to justice.

A Colossal Error

And then that storm was unleashed. Phase III investigated what went wrong – who was responsible for one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice ever. Thirty-four people were arrested and interviewed under caution on suspicion of offences including conspiring to pervert the course of justice and perjury. Twenty of them were police officers and 13 were told that they would face trial, along with two civilian witnesses.

But before they faced trial three of the alleged eye-witnesses were tried for perjury and conspiring to pervert the course of justice. Mr Justice (Sir David) Maddison ruled that they could not claim duress, as the law demanded that they must retract immediately, but to whom – police officers, the courts? Who? How could they be expected the courts or police after what they had gone through?

Mark Grommek, Angela Psaila and Learnne Vilday (the New Cardiff Three) were convicted – rightly as the law said, but wrongly according to justice and conscience. The court accepted that they had told the lies they were forced to tell and then they were prosecuted for telling them. They were each sentenced to 18 months in prison. This was and remains a huge injustice – the law could not have acted more inappropriately, but worse would soon follow.

Travesty

With 13 police officers and two witnesses due to face trial it was decided that eight former officers, including Graham Mouncher and Richard Powell and the witnesses Ian Massey and Violet Perriam would face trial first. The trial began in 2011. I was due to be a witness against Massey. Nicholas Dean QC and his prosecution team ensured that I would miss virtually all the trial for no good reason – actually there was a very good reason.

We were not meant to see what was unfolding. It would take a very long time to unravel, but unravel it would. The trial collapsed on largely spurious grounds. Disclosure was not what it should have been – that is unarguable, but whose fault is that? The straw that broke the camel’s back was the failure to disclose some documents – copies actually. The originals had been retained, and copies were taken.

The copies were meaningless. It was believed that they had been destroyed – evidence to that effect was given, but it was not true. A month after the sensational collapse of the trial the supposedly destroyed documents were discovered in the very boxes that they had been sent to police by the IPCC.

Unlawful

I had been kept out of the trial until it was far too late – we believe that was their intention all along. South Wales Police chose to cooperate with HMCPSI and the IPCC, both of whom were investigating aspects of the collapse of the trial. The terms of reference established that neither process was worth cooperating with as they would not establish why a notorious miscarriage of justice had been allowed to occur.

I chose not to cooperate and demanded the return of my work product, which was mine alone, as was the copyright on it. The Professional Standards Department unlawfully seized my work and distributed to others against my wishes in flagrant disregard of my rights and copyright.

The justification supplied a year late did not apply to me. Naturally the IPCC – itself an interested party and therefore not an impartial arbiter upheld the ludicrous justification – one that applied to criminal suspects not cooperating witnesses. Both HMCPSI and the IPCC failed miserably to explain why this appalling miscarriage of justice had occurred – inevitable really – as neither was concerned with that and nor was the Home Secretary, Theresa May. Her concern was to avoid a public inquiry.

Squaring the Circle

As early as the first week of the 2011 Police Corruption Trial it became obvious that the prosecution was lacklustre – notwithstanding that the prosecution team could talk a good talk. The defence case was a tried and tested method in such cases – deny that there had ever been a miscarriage of justice. The Cardiff Five were guilty, they claimed. But what about the DNA? What about Gafoor’s guilty plea? What about his insistence that he had acted alone?

Simple. None of that mattered. All that counted were his inconsistent accounts. He could only remember inflicting ten or twelve stab wounds and not the throat ones. So what? Well that meant it was possible that there was more than one attack. “Technically”, Angela Gallup said – the scientific equivalent of ‘and I can’t rule out the possibility that pigs could fly either!’

There was forensic pathology evidence and blood distribution pattern evidence that had an important story to tell. Lynette’s murder was never consistent with five killers and two witnesses charging around the crime-scene in darkness without leaving any trace of themselves or interfering with any of the evidence in the flat.

It simply flew in the face of any notion of logic.

The Final Insults

It served well in 2011 – so well that it was trotted out again in the compensation case in 2015. And as in 2015 the witnesses that could demolish this outrageous hypothesis were never called. We will be publishing Trials and Tribulations – Innocence Matters? soon. The aim is to reassert the truth – the Cardiff Five are, as they always were, totally innocent of any involvement in the murder of Lynette White, even though it is too late to matter to Yusef Abdullahi and Ronnie Actie.

Meanwhile, Gafoor had received a very lenient tariff in 2005 – just 12 years and 8 months, 13 years in reality once remand was taken into account. Consequently, Gafoor is now eligible to apply for release on parole. We will be publishing Bad Form – How Tariffs Protect the Guilty and Punish the Innocent soon to illustrate the grave flaws with the tariff system – one that sees no problem with treating the truly guilty more leniently than the innocent for the same crime. As Lloyd Paris – Tony’s brother – said, “Things are back to front!”

Downfall

The downfall of British judge Constance Briscoe has been long overdue. She claimed to have hauled herself up from adversity to sit on the Bench – a role model for aspiring black lawyers, but was she ever the inspiration she claimed to be? The 57-year-old barrister and part time judge was no stranger to controversy, having claimed to have triumphed over adversity in childhood and successfully sued her mother for libel.

She now contemplates her spectacular fall from grace from a prison cell – sentenced to 16 months for intending to pervert the course of justice. She deceived police investigating the offences committed by former Minister Chris Huhne and his estranged wife, the economist wife Vicky Pryce.

Briscoe’s recent crimes have been well reported, but should it have ever come to this? Fifteen years ago the Bar Council failed to investigate whether she was fit to practice over several very serious allegations, including forging signatures. The astonishing thing was the complainant was Briscoe’s mother whom she sued for libel. Her mother’s allegations are now being investigated.

An Ass

“Perjury strikes at the heart of the criminal justice system”, Mr Justice (Sir David) Maddison said when he jailed three witnesses who had lied in a notorious miscarriage of justice – the Lynette White Inquiry. Unlike Briscoe, Mark Grommek, Angela Psaila and Learnne Vilday had an excuse – a good one. They had been browbeaten into telling the lies the police demanded of them. Unlike Briscoe the intent to pervert the course of justice was not their’s, but they alone paid the price.

They had no real choice, but to tell the lies they told and once they had told the first batch, they were boxed in. They had little choice but to stick to a monstrous script  – one that they were later sent to jail for sticking to. Unlike Briscoe they had mitigation – plenty of it. The judge, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and even the police that investigated their perjury admitted that they had been bullied. They were subjected to conduct that was in Maddison’s words: “unacceptable in a civilised society”. They were denied a defence by an ass of a law that found this conduct unacceptable, but did not meet the legal standard of duress.

They had perverted the course of justice, but unlike Briscoe only because justice had been so perverted as to force them to commit those crimes against justice. They were then punished for committing the very crimes that they were given no choice but to commit. The law that resulted in their convictions is archaic and unjust. The lawyers and functionaries implementing it must know that In their situation virtually all of us would have done as they did, but it matters not a whit to the law and those charged to uphold it. Where was that same law and its enforcers when these victims of a grave injustice needed protection and support?

Freedom of  Choice

Unlike them, Constance Briscoe freely chose her path to disgrace, but she was treated more leniently than they were. The New Cardiff Three were sent to jail for 18 months – two more than Briscoe who had no excuse. Briscoe was intended to be the star witness against Huhne, but her friendship with Pryce and role in her friend’s revenge almost caused the trial to collapse. Briscoe and Pryce and Huhne – all of whom had privileged lives – had no excuse. The New Cardiff Three really had rotten lives and were vulnerable to the abuse by the criminal justice system that overcame them partly because of the vulnerability to abuse those lives left them open to.

Briscoe claims she overcame serious adversity in her childhood – her family tell a different story. Years after the allegations of her being a fantasist and worse first surfaced, they are finally being investigated seriously. Briscoe may yet face further trials.

Unfit for Purpose

The CPS has had over a quarter of a century to overcome teething problems. But it remains unfit for purpose. It botched the prosecution of police officers over a notorious miscarriage of justice through utter incompetence. It refuses to take responsibility for an appalling job throughout the notorious Lynette White Inquiry – far from the only botched prosecution it has been responsible for.

It prosecuted innocent men in spite of its Code for Crown Prosecutors, even having the chutzpah to justify the decision to prosecute by having secured convictions – now recognised as it should have been back then as one of Britain’s most notorious miscarriages of justice. It ignored the law when failing to appeal the outrageous leniency of the real killer’s tariff. Its performance in that case – and others too – has been a litany of gross failure.

It appointed a Disclosure Officer in a case where it knew that the defendants – former police officers – would seek to exploit disclosure obligations to undermine the trial. Despite this it fails to explain how the trial could have collapsed over disclosure if that lawyer had done his job. It refuses to account for the millions of public resources it has shamefully wasted, but it can prosecute people it accepts were bullied by those police officers and punish them alone for all the flaws its rotten performance in this case exemplifies.

The New Cardiff Three (Mark Grommek, Angela Psaila and Learnne Vilday) perjured themselves and perverted the course of justice, but unlike Briscoe they had no choice and the trial of those accused of forcing them to lie collapsed on an absurd technicality, meaning they evaded the consequences of their actions and uncivilised conduct. Our concern remains the conduct of the CPS. Judges being jailed for perjury is a rare occurrence – thankfully. However, justice must be dispensed evenly. In this case it has been, but what about all the others?

Embittered but Credible

Huhne, admittedly an embittered and ordinarily discredited source, raises important questions about the CPS. “Constance Briscoe has been revealed as a compulsive and self-publicising fantasist”, Huhne said after her conviction. “British justice is likely to be a lot fairer with Briscoe behind bars. If she can make up the witness statement used as the key evidence against me, she is clearly capable of hiding evidence she should have disclosed to the defence in the many cases that she prosecuted for the Crown Prosecution Service. Aggrieved defendants will now seek a CPS review”.

The Bar Council dismissed previous complaints against Briscoe as a family dispute. The judiciary also failed to rein in a judge, now exposed as rogue. The CPS has no plans to investigate cases handled by Briscoe as judge or barrister. Such decisions bring it into further disrepute. Surely now there can be no confidence in her conduct on the Bench and indeed as a barrister. And with the refusal of the CPS to investigate here cases, can there be any confidence in it?

The CPS will not investigate whether she has contributed to miscarriages of justice during her career at the Bar and on the Bench, which lasted almost three decades. The CPS has issued a statement: “We have no plans to review cases involving Constance Briscoe as counsel”. Why not? And why does the criminal justice system allow the CPS to betray justice yet again?

Important

“The science is important”, said Mark Evans QC in his closing argument on behalf of John Pope, in his retrial for the murder of a 34 year-old Karen Skipper. “That’s why you have the experts. It is important you understand the purpose of it and the limits of it. As far as science is concerned, you can take it from them. What deductions you make, is entirely for you. Where they and I part company is where they cease to talk about science and resort to amateur sleuthing”.

He criticised forensic scientist Michael Appleby in particular. Mr Evans said that Mr Appleby was emphatic that the blood-stain on Mrs Skipper’s knickers was wet and not dilute. “That’s important”, Mr Evans said, “as that is based on his observations. How could it not be diluted? We know that the clothes were damp from a heavy dew that night”.

Rehydrated

Mr Evans advised the jury to apply their common sense to all of the evidence. “When it comes to looking at dew and its effect on clothes, you know better than anyone”, he said. He pointed out that both the pocket of the jeans and the knickers which contained the blood-stains were exposed to the elements. “How could they not be dilute?” he asked before informing the court that the scientists said they were not.

Mr Evans conceded that the older the stains were the harder it is to rehydrate. He conceded that liquid would leach out. He questioned the size of both stains that had been reported. Every attempt to photograph the blood-stain on the knickers failed, but fluorescence would be obtained when exposed to different types of light. He suggested that there was fluorescence and that it was consistent with a smaller stain on the knickers that liquid (blood) had leached out from. This, he suggested, was evidence of rehydrated blood.

“The prosecution case is that it was deposited in attack, but in all probability it will be damp already”, Mr Evans said. He told the jury that the effects of leaching of fresh blood would have been noted and mentioned by the scientists. They did not. “Doesn’t it point to stain being much older?” Mr Evans asked. “Some diluting effect was inescapable [but] they will not accept it; did not see it”.

As Good as Any Other

Mr Evans told the jury that when Mr Pope was interviewed by police in 2007 he was told there was forensic evidence linking him to the murder of Karen Skipper, but nothing specific. That Mr Evans said, meant that Mr Pope, a man of limited intelligence, had to guess correctly that it was blood and concoct an explanation of it on the spot.

He told the jury that hands go into pockets at an angle and that the position that it landed in was consistent with Mr Pope’s account. [Nigel] Hodge and [Gillian] Leak had, said Mr Evans, accepted that the two spots will have coincided, but could only have done so when the jeans are being worn and done up and therefore, if the two spots had coincided at same time, the “only possibility is through the pocket and that is exactly what Mr Pope says”.

Mr Evans told the jury that if a blood-stained hand had been inserted in the pocket, then it would be elsewhere, but we are talking about tiny amount of blood. He invited the jury not to reject Mr Pope’s explanation of the earlier encounter with Mrs Skipper and how his blood could have got onto her clothing. “We can’t say, ʻthis is what happened’, all we can do is point out the possibilities”. He invited the jury to put their hands in their pocket. “Why can’t it be done?” he asked. He suggested that a tissue is like a sponge that could absorb blood and expunge it if pressure was applied and then soak it up again. When that process is finished, Mr Evans argued, more blood would be on the outside than the inside. Mr Pope’s account was he submitted, therefore, a perfectly credible explanation.

“Mr Murphy [Ian Murphy QC – the prosecutor] is quite wrong when he submitted that consensus of scientists is that you can consider this as incredible”, said Mr Evans. If something can happen, he suggested then, sometimes, invariably it will. “If the potential is there, the possibility is clearly there. They [the prosecution] have to prove that it did not happen in this case”.

Mr Evans insisted that the reconstruction conducted by Mrs Leak showed that it was possible for the jeans and knickers to have touched each other, thereby accounting for both stains. “Anything’s possible”, said Mr Evans, who insisted that it was for the prosecution to prove that it did not happen. “The point I made was for that to have happened by pure accident, both garments, both spots had to touch each other”. He told the jury that the opportunity existed. The jeans and knickers had been packaged together while damp with the belt. They had been taken out to retrieve the belt, which had been taken out before they were repacked. This, Mr Evans suggested, provided ample opportunity contact and therefore transfer. “The odds of it happening in that way are, I suggest, pretty high”, said Mr Evans.

He then highlighted what he contended was a real problem with the direct contact theory. He told the court that the jury had been assured that both blood-stains were direct contact stains from a pin-prick of blood, but while one was a smear the other was not. That, he suggested, was a real problem. The stain on the knickers had been produced by a wiping action that left no blood on the ridge, but on the pocket-lining it was a smear. “Ask yourselves how can it be that there is a wiping action with smearing on knickers, but with pocket, the same action, but no smear?” said Mr Evans. “There is a basic inconsistency”. He pointed out that anyone depositing the stains in the way the scientists and Mr Murphy had claimed would have had to remove the shoes, belt and trousers before getting access to the knickers. “Where’s the rest of the blood?” Mr Evans asked. “[It’s] extraordinary that there is no blood, you may think”.

Other Possibilities

“There are other possibilities in this case which you have to take on board and for this reason: if Phillip Skipper was the killer, then the blood-stains on the clothing doesn’t matter, does it?” said Mr Evans. “If you think Phillip Skipper could have been the killer, then that’s the end of it”.

Mr Evans detailed the circumstantial case against Mr Skipper that included the apparent lack of interest he had shown in the whereabouts of Mrs Skipper after she went out with the dogs that night. “So where does all this point you?” asked Mr Evans. “The prosecution tell you John Pope’s story is lie after after lie, but could a man like Pope really have made all of that up on the spur of the moment? We suggest, not in a million years. At the end of the day, you have to be sure that all of the other explanations fail and it must have been John Pope. Can you possibly do that in this case?”

Dog’s Breakfast

“You don’t get a pin prick of blood from a dog-bite”, Mr Evans told the jury. “If that dog [Samson] had attacked, you would not get a pin prick of blood”. Mr Evans reminded the jury that there was plenty of evidence that Samson in particular was fiercely protective of Karen Skipper. Mr Skipper, he reminded them, had suggested that the killer must have been known to her [he had mentioned Jimmy Turner and the man known as Steve in that context] or that there had been two killers.

While the prosecution dismissed Mr Pope’s explanation of the blood-stains as a “complete fantasy”, Mr Evans said that it had “the ring of truth about it”. Mr Pope did not know what forensic evidence the police had linking him to the murder when he was questioned. It could have been anything, Mr Evans said, but he gives them an account that explained bloodstains being found. Mr Murphy had previously told the jury that Mr Pope knew that it was blood because he had attacked Karen Skipper and been bitten by one of her dogs. He had then transposed that event to an invented incident three weeks earlier.

“Where does all the scientific evidence take you?” asked Mr Evans. “You can’t be sure of very much at all, save it (bloodstains) was there. The prosecution has to prove Mr Pope’s explanation has to be wrong. It’s as good as any other”.

Consequences

He had previously said that there were no consequences for Phillip Skipper if the jury thought it might be him and that there were none for Richard Mead either, but it was a different story for Mr Pope. “Remember, the consequences are serious”, said Mr Evans. “He has already been through one trial and an appeal process. It is so important that you get this right. If you think the forensic evidence was flawed, then convicting him on that basis would be wrong”.

The Honourable Mr Justice (Sir Roderick) Evans KT is summing-up. The jury is expected to be asked to begin considering their verdict on Friday. John Pope denies murdering 34 year-old Karen Skipper, whose body was discovered submerged in the River Ely in the morning of March 10^th 1996.

Guarantees

The families of murder victim Karen Skipper and her estranged husband Phillip who stood trial wrongly for her murder want a guarantee from the Secretary of State (Minister) of Justice that in the absence of compelling new evidence such as DNA, acquittals must be respected. They claim that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) could never have charged Mr Skipper, if he had been alive, on such evidence as Mark Evans QC allowed to use, especially as there was DNA evidence implicating another man, Evans’ client, so why was the defence allowed to do it without requiring a proof of guilt?

The victms’ families are shocked and disappointed that the criminal justice system allowed them to be victimised again with such poor quality evidence. A prison informer, Paul James had claimed at Mr Skipper’s trial in 1997 that Skipper admitted accompanying Mrs Skipper to Birdies Field that fateful night, but James refused to co-operate when called by Pope’s defence.

“I know that he [Mr Skipper] is dead and can’t defend himself,” James said, before the defence abandoned the attempt to get evidence from him and relied on statements he had made previously, along with evidence from earlier trials.

Quality

The quality of evidence did not improve. Mr Skipper’s neighbour, Pauline Horton, came forward after 13 years, claiming that she saw Mr Skipper following his wife towards Birdies Field in Cardiff on her last walk. She insisted that she was afraid of the Hell’s Angels, but neither Mr Skipper nor his friend David Davies were Hell’s Angels.

Horton accepted that both Mr Davies and Skipper had been perfectly nice to her. At best, she was, as prosecuting counsel Ian Murphy QC, had suggested, mistaken, but she would not countenance her evidence being rejected. “Don’t you call me a liar!” she told Mr Murphy angrily, but her evidence did not stand up. Perhaps there was a more sinister explanation of her evidence than Murphy suggested.

Scientifically Ludicrous

DNA from blood-staining on intimate areas of Mrs Skipper’s clothing linked Mr Pope, not Mr Skipper, to the crime. Mr Evans had claimed that the blood-stains had rehydrated from dew overnight and given the impression of fresh blood despite four scientists agreeing that direct contact was the most likely explanation and that rehydrated blood appears different from fresh blood.

Mr Pope’s explanation that Mrs Skipper’s dog bit him three weeks earlier after he removed a thorn from its paw and that Mrs Skipper had given him a tissue and transferred the blood to her pocket was rejected by the jury. It was a fanciful explanation and one that was flatly contradicted by the science.

Obscene

Mr Skipper had been eliminated as the source of that blood on the jeans fifteen years ago. At the time the prosecution claimed that it was not important. They had little choice as the prosecution was dead in the water if that evidence was acknowledged for what it was – proof of innocence. The prosecution in 1997 chose to ignore or minimise the importance of that evidence, which was seized on by Mr Pope’s QC, Mark Evans.

But the blood-staining was on intimate parts of Mrs Skipper’s clothing and was therefore quite obviously significant. It was clearly very inconvenient in the prosecution of Phillip Skipper.

If the significance of those blood-stains had been fully appreciated during the original investigation in 1996 or during Mr Skipper’s trial in 1997, it would have been crystal clear that Mr Skipper was innocent. That in turn would have ended his ordeal promptly and prevented a deplorable defence from being gifted to an unscrupulous man.

Nevertheless, Mr Pope was allowed to ignore Mr Skipper’s acquittal and accuse him twice more without any standard of proof.

“It should not be allowed”, said miscarriage of justice survivor Michael O’Brien. “A similar thing happened to me after I won my appeal. Phillip Skipper was entitled to be presumed innocent after his acquittal. Only compelling new evidence like DNA should allow an accusation like that against a person who has been acquitted or had their conviction quashed”.

Mr Justice (Sir Nigel) Davis at least had the good grace to stress that it was owed to the memory of Phillip Skipper to acknowledge his innocence.

Disgraceful

Neil Sayers had been shamefully let down. The 19 year-old student at Hadlow Agricultural College in Kent was left to pay the price for his lack of knowledge of forensic entomology. The life cycles of insects was crucially important to his chance of justice as that was the only possibility in the circumstances of this case to establish the post-mortem-interval, which would show when the relevant event to the body took place – either a range of when death occurred or, in this case, when the attempt to partially burn the body of Russell Crookes took place.

Crookes had been missing for almost two weeks. His mutilated, partially burned, maggot-infested body was discovered in a waterlogged grave in a copse run by Hadlow Agricultural College. Graham Wallis could be tied to the crime in various ways, but he took the chance to shift blame onto Sayers. Either Sayers is guilty and is therefore a vicious murderer and callous liar, or he is the victim of a cruel miscarriage of justice.

Forensic science offered the best chance to resolve whether Wallis was telling the truth, or cynically inserted an innocent man – supposedly a friend – into his account, to cover up his own responsibility for the murder of Russell Crookes. Sayers’ defence team performed abysmally. Evidence proving that Wallis had lied repeatedly was ignored, even the indisputable scientific variety. They ignored evidence that could have proved that Wallis had lied about when the fire occurred, even though that would have opened the door to destroying Wallis’ credibility.

A First Bite

Sayers knows that the criminal justice system does not permit him to have a second bite of the cherry, but he didn’t get a first bite. Wallis insisted that they had tried to burn the body of Russell Crookes immediately after he was killed, but this was hard to believe, because there had been several visits to that site in the days following Crookes’ disappearance.

According to Charles Miskin QC’s case the scorch-pattern and fire-related debris had been there on every one of these visits and been missed by all of them. It seemed very unlikely, but Sayers’ lawyers had failed to call evidence regarding the fire-site at the trial. He would not get a second chance. The same could have been argued regarding the maggots too, but Sayers was fortunate. Legal aid was granted once Kent Police confirmed that some maggots had been located.

Some had been routinely thrown away. Imagine throwing away half a cloth that had smeared blood on it before having it DNA tested and storing the rest in a fridge or cupboard at a police station for five years. Change cloth for maggots and that’s what happened here. It should never be allowed to happen again. This was vital evidence and it should have been treated with the respect due to a forensic science and evidence.

Belated Tests

Sadly the fixed sample, rather than the sample to be reared, had been thrown away. They would have been better as the time the precise time they died was known, which would have meant that a more accurate post-mortem-interval could have been calculated. The ʻreared’ maggots still existed; they were located in a fridge at a police station. They were brought to Dr Martin Hall’s laboratory at the National History Museum and tested by both Hall and his independent German colleague Dr Mark Benecke.

For five years the maggots had been prevented from telling their story, even though they were the only scientific way of establishing when the body suffered a significant event, which was either when death occurred if they had survived the attempt to burn the body, or when that attempt took place if they hadn’t. Unfortunately, Michael Heath’s error over the extent of fire-damage caused further problems and that would require a small fortune to put right.

Inadequate Representation

Russell Crookes was a student at Hadlow Agricultural College in Kent when he went missing in May 1998. His partially burned, mutilated and maggot-infested body was discovered nearly two weeks later.  It was an awful crime – of that there is no doubt. His murderer(s) deserved to be punished severely.

He had last been seen in the company of fellow students Neil Sayers and Graham Wallis. They soon emerged as the prime suspects – the only ones Kent Police investigated. Sayers protested his innocence, but Wallis confessed, although his confession was that he was there while Sayers did everything. It was more accusation than confession. Sayers’ solicitor at trial, Ian Reed, failed to grasp the significance of forensic science in this case.

He did not even notice the maggots, let alone understand their potential. The entomological evidence only had a chance of emerging for one reason. I knew that they should have been sent to a forensic entomologist and insisted on knowing what had happened to them, because if they existed, they could still be tested, even then, five years later.

Wasted Opportunities

Reed completely wasted the opportunity and the pathologist instructed by him, Peter Jerreat, failed to inform him as well, but Jerreat was the wrong choice. Reed’s firm Berry and Berry knew all about Michael Heath’s dubious pathology. The firm had done an excellent job of representing Craig Kerwin a year before Sayers’ arrest. They knew that Heath’s methods were suspect and which forensic pathologists should have been instructed. Reed made a mess of the opportunity.

The pathology-related issues were of great significance. That would have been realised if it had been investigated properly at the time. It wasn’t, but that could and should occur later this year, more than a decade after Heath made a mess of his case.

Sayers’ case is unique as the man who prosecuted him, Charles Miskin QC, relied on Heath as a credible expert, but subsequently turned the tables on Heath. Miskin represented the Pathology Delivery Board in the tribunal that it brought against Heath.

Miskin demolished Heath’s credibility without grasping the importance of pathology-related issues that were actually vital to Sayers’ case. Meanwhile, Sayers remains in prison waiting for a competent review of Heath’s pathology, which David Jessel failed to provide when the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) reviewed its cases that Heath was involved in.

Weak

Reed’s successor, Kevin Hansford, was even worse, regarding the maggots. Despite being made aware of them and their significance, he insisted on wasting months refusing to ask the police if they existed because he decided that they would not still be available five years on. That was not his job and he was wrong anyway.

He had been asked by Sayers – instructed actually – to enquire about them, but could not be bothered. He expected the CCRC to investigate everything that he put to them, yet refused to investigate. His submissions were utterly inadequate to put it mildly. Forensic science, let alone entomology, was not even mentioned in a case that could and should have become Britain’s genuine CSI if either he or Reed had done their jobs adequately. Unsurprisingly, Hansford’s weak application was rejected. If I had received such an application I’d have rejected it too.

Despite the rejection of his application, Hansford continued to refuse to ask the police if the maggots existed. Patience ran out and he was replaced by a solicitor prepared to ask the question, Jane Hickman. She didn’t think they would exist either, but unlike Hansford, she was prepared to ask the question and was happy to be proved wrong. Some maggots were located and provided to experts instructed by Hickman.

Legal aid was granted to have the maggots examined by Dr Martin Hall and a second expert, Dr Mark Benecke was independently instructed as well. Sadly, Heath’s wretched pathology loomed large still, as his report resulted in an error in the instructions, due his insistence on using misleading terminology that was unsupported by the evidence. The consequences of this error have never been redressed and probably never will be.

The Rules of the Game

The family of murder victim Karen Skipper took a long time to accept that her deceased husband Phillip was innocent, but they are now convinced and share the outrage of his family, which includes the mother of his daughter as well. They all believe that, rather than observing the trial of her murderer, John Pope, they were forced to endure yet another trial of Mr Skipper – a man who could not defend himself and whose rights and reputation were given no legal protections at all.

They are further aggrieved that this time Pope’s retrial occurred without any safeguard at all of Mr Skipper’s right to be presumed innocent. Mr Pope, through his counsel, Mark Evans QC, was given carte blanche to put Mr Skipper on trial yet again, only he could use so-called evidence that had been ruled inadmissible during Mr Skipper’s trial in 1997.

The families of Karen Skipper and Phillip Skipper are united in their disbelief that the criminal justice system tolerated this. They say that relying on old evidence that had failed to convince the jury first time round and incredible new evidence that should have been laughed out of court meant that there was no burden of proof on his accusers – Mr Popeʼs defence. Where, they ask was the respect for their human rights? Where, in fact, was respect for the law?

The roles appeared to have been somewhat reversed. Prosecuting QC, Ian Murphy, was bound by the rules of evidence and Mr Popeʼs right to be presumed innocent and he observed his burden scrupulously. Mr Evans effectively was prosecuting Mr Skipper, but there were no rules governing what he could say and do.

Scrupulously Unfair

The judge, Mr Justice (Sir Roderick) Evans, bent over backwards to accommodate Mr Pope – even giving a bad character direction on Mr Skipper despite the lack of convictions justifying it. Pope was allowed to sit back while his QC prosecuted Skipper with no constraints. Phillip Skipper could not defend himself from the character assassination and nobody represented his interests, even though it was in the interests of the prosecution of Pope to do so.

This was a shocking abuse of the law and raises the question of why the system did not provide lawyers to represent the rights of the families of Phillip Skipper and Karen too. It got far worse. Mr Evans had even suggested that if the jury thought that it could have been Mr Skipper, then they should acquit his client. That outraged miscarriage of justice survivor Michael O’Brien.

“I don’t know how they can get away with saying those words to the jury and why the judge didn’t step in because it’s already been established in a court of law that Mr Skipper was acquitted and under European law, it says once you’re acquitted, you’re entitled to the presumption of innocence, so how they’ve managed to get away with this defence”? said O’Brien.

Mr Murphy could have done so far more robustly. After all, it was in his interests to prove Mr Skipper innocent, as that would have cut the ground out from beneath the deplorable defence tactics. Sadly, this appears to be a trend in such prosecutions – nobody represents the rights of the wrongly accused.

“Well it more than beggars belief. It just makes you angry, you know, the fact that a man who can’t defend himself”, Mr O’Brien continued. “That’s like picking on a vulnerable person and this is picking on someone who can’t defend himself and it’s the same principle behind it and it shouldn’t have been allowed”.

Inadmissible evidence and also the quite frankly ludicrous evidence of Pauline Horton masqueraded as ʻproofʼ of Skipperʼs guilt. The Crown could never have prosecuted such a shoddy case, so why was a defence lawyer allowed to do so by the back door?

“Well I think we’ve got to define what significant new evidence is”, O’Brien says. “Let me put it clearly, unless there is DNA or something of that calibre, or somebody who can describe them to a tee who didn’t know the person who had done the crime, but if they’re too scared to come forward where you can actually prove there was no collusion, then you shouldn’t be allowed to produce this kind of evidence and blame other people as the defence, because that is just attacking somebody’s innocence again”.

O’Brien is outraged. “I think that goes against everything that the court says the innocent person is entitled to and which an acquitted person is entitled to – the presumption of innocence – and I think the only reason why Pope’s defence has got away with this is because they know they have legal privilege”, he says. “They know they are supposed to go on the facts. What evidence is there that Phillip Skipper has done this crime? It should never have arisen a second time, but they’ve done it. It has to be stopped”.

And there’s another issue. Why did the prosecution fail to demonstrate Mr Skipper’s innocence when the evidence to do so had been there all along?

Lax Procedures

The families of a murder victim and her late former husband – he was wrongly accused of that crime fifteen years ago – joined forces to slam what they believe are lax procedures at a recent trial. They claim that Phillip Skipper was wrongly accused all over again at the retrial of former labourer John Pope – that it was more like Mr Skipper that was on trial than Mr Pope.

Mr Skipper was not alive to defend his reputation. Mr Pope was found guilty of the murder of Karen Skipper for the second time last week. He had been convicted of the murder in February 2009, but the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction last year and ordered a retrial. Its judgement still has not been published.¹

The Presumption of Innocence?

Mrs Skipperʼs body was discovered in the River Ely in Cardiff on the morning of March 10th 1996. A year later her estranged husband Phillip who died of cancer in 2004 was acquitted of her murder. According to the criminal justice system, the presumption of innocence was never taken away from Phillip Skipper. The Fitted-In Project followed the case carefully. It was after all Walesʼ second vindication case in the DNA age.

To the disgust of the families of Mrs Skipper and Mr Skipper, Popeʼs defence QC Mark Evans turned it into Mr Skipperʼs third trial. Having attended this trial, we agree that it was hard if not impossible to spot any evidence of Mr Skipper being presumed innocent.

We are surprised that despite the European Convention of Human Rights being incorporated into UK law in 1998, the Article 8 Right to Family Life of Mr Skipper’s family was paid such scant regard. Similarly, Mrs Skipper’s family’s rights were not defended either. This is applied in the setting of the tariff too.

Lip Service

The families insist that there was no presumption of innocence for Mr Skipper despite his acquittal, but the coalition government says there is no problem.

“It has long been an important feature of our criminal justice system that a person charged with an offence is presumed to be innocent until proved guilty”, said the Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice, Lord (Tom) McNally. “A person found not guilty is to be treated as innocent, as too is a person whose conviction has been quashed on appeal”.

Fine words, but the treatment of Mr Skipperʼs memory in this trial shows that the practice is vastly different. Mark Evans QC lost no opportunity to accuse Mr Skipper of his estranged wifeʼs murder, using evidence that had been rejected by the jury that tried and acquitted Mr Skipper and evidence that was inadmissible against him in that trial.

This was a thinly disguised prosecution of a man who could no longer defend himself – a prosecution that had no burden of proof and for whom there appeared to be no rules on the admissibility of evidence.

There was absolutely no presumption of innocence for Mr Skipper and no thought was spared for the feelings of his child – still a young teenager. The quality of the so-called evidence used in this back-door prosecution of Phillip Skipper was woeful. There ought to be rules governing such tactics and consequences for such conduct.

1 The judgement was published subsequently: The Editor.

Satish Sekar explains the case to Colombia’s finest forensic scientists.

Despicable

John Pope was a suspect originally in the murder of Karen Skipper, which occurred in Cardiff in March 1996. He was eliminated, incorrectly as it turned out. Sadly the late Phillip Skipper stood trial for a crime that he did not commit the following year. An inquiry by West Midlands Police concluded that the decision to prosecute Skipper was justified. It certainly was not. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) should not have allowed it to come to trial.

The scientific evidence was not allowed to speak as it could and should have. Blood-staining in an intimate area of the victim’s clothing established his innocence through forensic science techniques that were available at the time. DNA testing established that it was not his blood, nor that of his estranged wife Karen.

That should have eliminated Skipper from police enquiries, but desperate times called for desperate measures. A ludicrous explanation was advanced – one that hinged on Mrs Skipper never having washed resold jeans that she bought at a market several weeks previously. Phillip Skipper was rightly acquitted, but the damage had been done, despite the absence of both smoke and fire.

Remorseless

Nevertheless, his memory – he died of cancer aged just 48 – was put on trial again three times. It was Pope’s DNA and his explanation of the transfer of blood that he claimed caused that positive DNA identification stretched credibility. Was it possible? Yes. Was it likely? No.

Pope never took responsibility for Karen Skipper’s murder. That’s his right, but blaming an innocent man who could not defend himself three times was reprehensible to put it mildly. And after being found guilty again his QC Mark Evans put forward mitigation on his behalf – the closest that Pope ever came to accepting responsibility.

Shamefully, the tariff was exactly the same as before, but there was no recognition from the court of the ordeal of Phillip Skipper and his family, not even the acknowledgement of his innocence that the first trial judge Mr Justice (Sir Nigel) Davis had given. Why not? Instead, the second trial’s judge, Mr Justice (Sir Roderick) Evans had decided to give the jury a bad character warning about Skipper even though he had no relevant convictions.

After Jeffrey Gafoor was brought to justice for the murder of Lynette White, allowing the innocent to suffer for your crime was supposed to be taken into account. In fact, it has never happened – an appalling message to give to killers as it tells them that there are no consequences for allowing the innocent to go to jail for their crimes.

A Total Disgrace

The Fitted-In Journal covered Pope’s retrial last year (2011) – many other mainstream media did not – and at least some of those that did simply didn’t get it. Another miscarriage of justice was unfolding before our eyes, but few media were interested in it. They still aren’t even though this case bears all the hallmarks of a serious travesty of justice and wrecked lives – many of them.

Karen Skipper’s family had been cruelly deceived. They had originally thought that ‘Ginger’ (Skipper’s nickname), was guilty and after having let him into their family, they hated him with a passion. Skipper died young of stomach cancer, maintain his innocence to the end. They were wrong about him and accept that now, but where are they supposed to put their guilt now? How are they to come to terms with having hated an innocent man?

Neither Victim Support, nor the Miscarriages of Justice Support Service visited either Skipper family – Philip’s or Karen’s – to assist them through a very difficult process that they had to endure thrice with a fourth likely should Pope appeal. That included a girl who had been forced to hear about her deceased father being wrongly accused of murder three times while barely in her teens. Her mother could have painted a different picture of Mr Skipper than the one that emerged at trial, but the court never heard from the mother of his child.

Meanwhile, Pope’s defence could hurl any mud, however nonsensical, with no controls, while they effectively prosecuted Phillip Skipper once more, but without a burden of proof. There was no representation for Phillip Skipper’s estate, or his family, let alone redress. Why not? There was clear and unequivocal scientific evidence that he was innocent.

Outrage

Pope’s defence even demanded an acquittal for their client if the jury thought that Skipper might have done it. Had the Crown tried to prosecute Skipper on such evidence, it is inconceivable that the Court of Appeal would have given permission for double jeopardy to be set aside.

It was a rehash of the original Skipper trial, including evidence the original prosecutor thought not worthy to put before the jury, a ‘new’ witness whose account beggared belief and there was DNA against someone else – a suspect who had occurred in the original inquiry – Pope. Why was this allowed?

The CPS could not hope to bring such a prosecution to trial now, so why was Pope’s defence allowed to do so? There was outrage aplenty for Bob Dowler when convicted serial killer Levi Bellfield tried to point a finger at him and rightly so, but where is the outrage for Phillip Skipper, who had no opportunity to even defend himself and where is the outrage for his daughter?

Obligations

It was apparently a matter of pride for South Wales Police to put right what they got wrong in the Lynette White Inquiry. They failed to do so, but in the Karen Skipper Inquiry, they refused to even try. Why were they allowed to get away with that?

Where was the outrage for Karen Skipper and her family? Where was the outrage for Phillip Skipper and his family? And where is society’s outrage? Why do we tolerate millions of pounds of our resources being thrown away without consequences or even accountability in cases such as this?

Where is the investigation of the Karen Skipper Inquiry to establish how the wrong man originally stood trial and if any errors occurred that could have prevented repetition? In 2009 after Pope’s original conviction I asked South Wales Police to investigate what went wrong. They refused. The result was a colossal waste of public resources, time and unnecessary suffering imposed on a young girl who deserved far better. She still does.

Two trials and an appeal later, there is no excuse for failing to investigate this and other vindication cases thoroughly, but there is one vital lesson to emerge from the Lynette White Inquiry Police Corruption Trial. South Wales Police and the criminal justice system cannot be trusted to put right what they got wrong.

1 This article was originally published in the Fitted-In Journal, which was sadly destroyed by hackers and is no longer available. The content of this article is relevant to some of our projects – hence our republication of it. Satish Sekar is the author of Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry (The Fitted In Project, 1998).This article was uploaded onto this site after the publication of his second book on the Lynette White Inquiry. The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt was subsequently published by Waterside Press in 2012.

The Colombian scientists listening with disbelief at how the injustice suffered by the Skippers occurred.

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