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

Continued Need

The conviction of Jeffrey Gafoor, the real killer of Lynette White, justified our belief in the case of the Cardiff Five and its potential to change the criminal justice system, but it soon raised other issues that could not be resolved by books alone. We recognised that we needed to evolve and decided to expand the scope of The Fitted-In Project.
We began that process by formally establishing The FIP as a company limited by guarantee in February 2010 to enable us to conduct projects and activities that would highlight our concerns and improve the lives of the victims of miscarriages of justice and improve the criminal justice system in the process.

What We Do

We decided that in addition to projects, we should participate in and initiate activities that further the Aims and Objectives of The FIP. Our projects highlight issues such as vindication, which we pioneered, after-care for victims of miscarriages of justice, which includes the effect on their families, the effect of tariffs on them and the use of sport to assist them to rebuild their lives. We will publish reports on some of these projects and pamphlets on specific issues.
We have also developed an international perspective on our projects and activities, participating in international activities, such as the Working Breakfast in Bogotá that detailed The Fitted-In Project’s work to some of Colombia’s finest forensic scientists. Vindication is a phenomenon that affects several jurisdictions and there are important difference-making miscarriages of justice that have the potential to change criminal justice systems throughout the world. One such case occurred in Uganda to our member Mpagi Edward Edmary (see his profile in the folder The International Committee).
The FIP realised that we could also assist people by hiring out the expertise of our members for activities as long as they fit our Aims And Activities, but in order to maximise our potential we need charitable status which will be applied for shortly.

Our Expertise

The Fitted-In Project’s members have a diverse range of skills and expertise that has led clients to wanting to hire them as consultants. They can hire our members’ expertise through The Fitted-In Project’swebsite. Satish Sekar was recently hired through us as a consultant on South Wales Police cases by a solicitor and also by the Sherlock Holmes Museum regarding forensic science elements in a particular case. We do not do casework unless hired to do so through this process. Our consultancy work must comply with or Aims And Objectives and benefit both our clients and the public.
Social Justice

The Fitted-In Project highlights issues related to under-reported areas of miscarriage of justice work. These injustices devastate lives and not just of those wrongly accused. Some victims of these injustices are not even recognised as having suffered a miscarriage of justice. It is a grave injustice that people such as Colin Stagg are not recognised as victims of miscarriages of justice. Stagg was vindicated by the acceptance of responsibility by Robert Napper, but definitions of miscarriages of justice do not include those acquitted at trial.
We believe that people who can be proved innocent must be considered victims of miscarriages of justice. Four of the six vindication cases in the DNA age in Britain involve people who were acquitted at trial. It is not enough to say that they have not been proved guilty; they are demonstrably innocent and that must be acknowledged in order to help them move on and society too. The FIP believes that people like Colin Stagg must be acknowledged as victims of miscarriages of justice. The definition must change to recognise what they have been through and begin the process of restorative justice for them.

The FIP recognises that they are entitled to restorative justice. We include this in our projects on after-care and on tariff changes too. We also conduct projects which use miscarriages of justice victims’ love of sport to help them to integrate back into society. Similarly we have further projects that use sporting talent, especially of young people, to try to encourage them to participate in professional sport or in community sporting events rather than drift into crime. These are among the social justice aspects of our work.