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.