The prosecution team in the Lynette White murder trial included two Queens Counsels, led by David Elfer. The other became Mr Justice Roderick Evans. Elfer failed to understand Stephen Miller’s vulnerability and used a confession that was false, ludicrous and unlawfully obtained. He relied on obviously unreliable witnesses and presented a case to the jury that should never have come to trial.

Both he and the CPS must have known that the statements of one of Yusef Abdullahiʼs alibi witnesses supported his claims that he had been working on a ship in Barry Docks on the night of the murder. Despite that knowledge they not only bluffed the defence into not calling vital alibi witness Brynley Samuel, but gave the jury the false impression that Samuel didnʼt help Abdullahi.

Judicial Responsibilities

The trial judges bear responsibility too. The late Sir David McNeill plainly had a standard on oppression that Lord Taylor strongly disagreed with – one that was open to shocking abuse. It set a standard that would have allowed police to find the weakest person and bully them into accepting what they wanted to hear. Even now some believe that there was nothing wrong with the way that Miler was questioned.

Taylor, sitting with a then Mr Justice (Sir John) Laws and Mr Justice (Sir Oliver) Popplewell, were ‘horrified’ by the methods that McNeill found admissible, but they too failed to resolve a vital issue. McNeill was wrong in law and that fact should have been acknowledged by the appeal judges. Had McNeill ruled on the confession as he should have done, the miscarriage of justice would probably not have occurred and the terrible error of not arguing that Miller had been bullied would likely not have happened in the second trial.

Severance

Even the next trial judge Mr Justice (Sir John) Leonard cannot escape censure. A few well-chosen words from judge to jury that Leonard thought would dispel the prejudice from refusing to sever Miller’s trial from that of his co-defendants who did not confess – a recurring theme in miscarriage of justice cases – were ignored by the jury. The same thing had happened in another South Wales case where Leonard was the trial judge less than five years earlier.

That too was later recognised as an awful miscarriage of justice – the Darvell brothers (Paul and Wayne). The murder of Sandra Phillips remains unsolved. Leonard should have been criticised by the Court of Appeal judges for his failure to sever these trials – in practice the only way to ensure that the trials of defendants who did not confess were not prejudiced by the admissions of those who did.

It must now be clear – it should have been at the time – that juries rely on confessions. They cannot believe that people confess to crimes they did not commit, especially for such a meagre reward as an end to the interrogations when that means sacrificing their long term interests and freedom, possibly for a very long time, but they do.

A Wretched History

The history of false confessions contributing to wrongful convictions is a long and wretched one that has continued to occur despite PACE. Understanding of the causes of these confessions and extent of vulnerabilities has undoubtedly improved, but defence lawyers cannot be immune from this process.

Millerʼs original lawyers had no idea or understanding of the extent of his vulnerabilities and need for robust support. The result was an egregious and entirely preventable miscarriage of justice, not just against Miller, but his co-accused too.

Inadmissible

The jury should have been protected from relying on inadmissible evidence like that, but it must be obvious that juries tend to believe confessions, however absurd, in these cases, especially without receiving the proper context of why innocent people confess to crimes they did not commit and on occasion implicate other innocent people. They too were not criticised by the appeal judges.

Those judges couldn’t wait to quash the convictions of the Cardiff Three, but in their rush to do so they failed to allow grounds to be developed that years later were at the heart of the recently failed trial of the former police officers and witnesses. Had those grounds been developed in 1992 as they should have been, safeguards that could have helped to prevent other miscarriages of justice would have been established.

Damage Limitation

The Court of Appeal refused to apologise and despite its strengths on the one area it considered in depth, the judgement that freed the Cardiff Three left them vulnerable to an unjustified and unjustifiable whispering campaign. That disgraces the criminal justice system.

It was in fact little more than a damage limitation exercise. However the attempt to force the lid shut on a can of worms, the like of which South Wales had never seen before, ultimately failed. The final reckoning and damage to both the force and criminal justice system proved far worse than if they had grasped the nettle two decades ago. There is a lesson in that.

The Cardiff Five are no more innocent now than they were when wrongly arrested and charged. They should never have gone through the ordeal that the state gave them no option but to endure and nor should Lynetteʼs family or indeed the people of South Wales. It should not have required finding the real killer to prove innocence and facilitate an investigation into what went wrong.