Stefan Kiszko was vindicated over a decade after his death by the conviction of the real killer of Lesley Molseed, Ronald Castree, but there are others who will never be vindicated. For them exoneration is as good as it gets, but they have to live with petty whispering campaigns questioning their innocence.

Hensley Wiltshire died in controversial circumstances in January 1989. Wrongly held in custody and denied the medical attention he needed Wiltshire deteriorated to the point of collapse. He had visited hospital twice in the night of January 5th-6th. The record of his injuries makes interesting reading. Significant injuries were discovered at the post-mortem examination that were not detected on either previous visit to hospital.

The discrepancy was never adequately explained. It was plain that either Tony Poole and/or Gary Mills had inflicted those injuries or Wiltshire had suffered a beating in the cells of Gloucester Police Station. The medical evidence was never properly resolved and nor was the issue of consent to be treated, but there were other causes concern that contributed to a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Inappropriate

Mills and Poole always instead that Mills had defended himself from three attacks by Wiltshire and that Poole was not involved. Neville Juke had been present throughout the incident in Poole’s Conduit Street flat. He was, as the jury recognised, an important witness, but the jury never heard from him.

Juke had been warned off attending the committal hearing. He had been threatened with arrest if he came. Juke recorded part of that conversation – one that then Detective Inspector Trevor Gladding lied about at their trial in 1990. Amazingly, Mills and Poole’s defence had that tape and therefore knew that Gladding had lied to the jury, but a well-respected QC didn’t play it to the jury.

Ian Macdonald QC believed that he would have had to call Juke to verify the tape. In fact he didnʼt. The now discredited Police Complaints Authority (PCA) proved that Gladding was the officer on the tape easily by comparing that recording to known examples of Gladdingʼs voice from interviews that he had conducted.

Had the jury heard that tape it would surely have destroyed Gladding’s credibility and shown the prosecution in a very poor light. And this error came from a very experienced and competent QC.

Permitting Perjury

But Gladdingʼs conduct was far from the only example of inappropriate conduct by police in that investigation that went unchallenged at trial. In time disclosure obligations changed and a pattern of misconduct emerged. A crucial witness claimed to have seen into the flat while Wiltshire was allegedly been attacked and heard Wiltshire say ʼNo, Tony, no!ʼ above the sound of a sound-system at full volume.

Unknown to defence lawyers police officers knew that the witness, Paul White, had lied. In fact, they knowingly allowed him to claim that he had gone there on his own in his statement when he had told them previously that he had gone there with another man who did not verify what White claimed to have seen and heard.

Integrity

It also emerged that Gladding and a colleague who later rose to the rank of Superintendent, John Jeynes, had misrepresented the content of Jukeʼs second statement to police. This had the effect of deceiving Mills and his defence lawyers into thinking that Juke did not support his claim of self-defence.

Having been bluffed in this manner not to call Juke, it took 14 years to acknowledge that the investigation lacked the integrity required to be the basis of safe convictions. It should never have taken so long. Neither Mills nor Poole received the extent of help and support that they needed to rebuild their lives, despite the existence of a government-supported scheme to assist victims of miscarriages of justice like them. Gary Mills sadly passed away on December 10^th 2012.

Exoneration and Vindication

Exoneration on appeal or acquittal at trial is where most miscarriage of justice cases are left – exoneration without acceptance of innocence. Unlike most I refused to stop investigating, believing that it was possible to resolve this case fully by finding the real killer.

The Cardiff Five were innocent, but Lynette White remained as robbed of justice as she had ever been and her family and society too were horribly cheated. This was and remains the difference-making miscarriage of justice in Britain, but only because it was possible to find the real killer and vindicate the originally accused, proving their innocence beyond doubt and that in turn would open the door to real change and not just for them.¹

Vindication of the Cardiff Five was essential. It began the process of acknowledging what had gone wrong and possibly redressing it. Outrageously the police were allowed to dictate the terms of establishing what went wrong – a process that ultimately failed miserably and created new victims in the process.

Historic

In July 2003 Jeffrey Gafoor became the first murderer in British history to plead guilty to a murder that had previously resulted in a miscarriage of justice. Like South Wales Police, he apologised to both Lynette’s family and the Cardiff Five.

To their eternal shame no other individual or organisation involved in the miscarrying of justice in this scandalous injustice has apologised, let alone taken responsibility for their roles in it. But justice requires more than apologies – far more – and it should not depend on vindication, which occurs too rarely.

Facilitation or Acquiescence

I have been involved in miscarriage of justice work for over two decades. The role of the criminal justice system in facilitating or at least acquiescing in miscarriages of justice can no longer be ignored. The Cardiff Five have been vindicated and it was a rare case where the poor performance of a lawyer – it ought to have been plural – was acknowledged, but several others have never been accepted.

For example, the tragic case of Stefan Kiszko was one where the performance of his QC disgraced every concept of justice. There is no doubt that Kiszko was innocent. He was accused of the murder of a child and dealt with severely by other prisoners unaware of his vulnerability and of comprehensive proof of his innocence.

Kiszko was vindicated 32 years after the appalling murder of eleven-year-old Lesley Molseed, but it was far too late. Kisko was long dead, but evidence of his innocence had been known for many years by then. It should have prevented his wrongful conviction and the scandalous theft of his life by an an incompetent system that failed to ensure that proof of his innocence was clearly presented to the jury.

Outrageous

His defence QC, later to become Home Secretary, Leader of the House of Lords and Governor of Bermuda, Baron David Waddington, made significant and outrageous errors of judgement. Despite being bombarded with masses of unused papers at the opening of Kiszko’s trial, Waddington did not seek an adjournment to go through it.

Waddington pursued a defence of diminished responsibility despite Kiszko refusing to authorise it. But the worst error of all proved Kiszko’s innocence beyond doubt and later the guilt of Ronald Castree. The murderer had deposited his semen on Molseed’s clothing. It did not match Kiszko and was later proved to have been deposited by Castree.

Even at his trial it was obvious that the semen proved Kiszko innocent. The former tax-clerk could not produce semen. The failure to present this evidence of innocence disgraces every concept of justice and Kiszko’s then defence lawyers failed him and society miserably.

This was a truly appalling miscarriage of justice – one of Britain’s worst ever – compounded by the fact that Kiszko died aged just 41 in December 1993, having been released after 17 years wrongful imprisonment the previous year. He never recovered from his ordeal – an entirely preventable one.

But it should not require vindication to learn the lessons of cases like this and there are others which will almost certainly never end in vindication. What about them?