Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (June 1st 2011)

Discretion and Valour

Of the seven vindication cases in Britain four of them are no longer eligible for compensation or after-care and it is too late to help a fifth, who would have qualified.[2] The abolition of the Discretionary Scheme for compensation in 2006 denies anyone whose conviction is quashed too soon eligibility for compensation. The current government endorsed that shameful decision.[3]

“The discretionary compensation scheme was abolished on 19 April 2006 by the then Home Secretary and the coalition Government have no plans to reintroduce it,” Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice, Lord (Thomas) McNally replied to a written question from Lord (John) Laird earlier this year.[4]

“We will continue to consider applications for compensation under the statutory scheme, Section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, which fully meets our international obligations.”

Scandalous

That means that some people who have been vindicated would be excluded if their cases were to happen now, but compensation is only part of the problem. There is an even bigger scandal over the provision of care or restoration.
A ludicrous error passed unnoticed nearly a decade ago. The Home Office recognised that victims of miscarriages of justice required and deserved assistance to rebuild their lives. It established a Working Group to consider the issue and establish such a scheme. It was given terms of reference and so was Peter Shore (not the former MP of that name), the Consultant that it hired to conduct a scoping study.
Shore failed to execute those terms of reference adequately and recommended a scheme that excluded the vast majority of victims of miscarriages of justice. Only Sean Hodgson is alive and eligible for the scheme operated by the MJSS, which begs the question, what use is it if it excludes the demonstrably innocent?[5]

To its shame and disgrace it failed to highlight the obvious injustice of its remit excluding among others Colin Stagg. There is plenty of shame and disgrace to go round over this and that includes mainstream media.

Plain Wrong

The term injustice is grossly inadequate to describe the suffering that Stagg and others like him went through. If he is not the victim of a miscarriage of a justice, the term has no meaning. Stagg is entitled to more than just compensation for what happened to him.
He did not ask for what happened to him to occur and is in no way responsible for the incompetence and unethical practices that ruined his life. He will always be identifiable as the suspect in the Rachel Nickell case regardless of his proven innocence.
At last he has now received apologies for what he went through, but the state has an obligation to restore him to the life that he should have had if that miscarriage of justice had not happened to him. That has not happened and the coalition government has no intention of ensuring that it does. In fact, its ministers donʼt even know its own policy.
“The Ministry of Justice funds the Miscarriage of Justice Support Service (MJSS) to help those who have had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal,” McNally replied to Laird. “The MJSS provides help with issues such as healthcare, accommodation, finance and relationships. The MJSSʼ funding has recently been extended for a further year to March 2012 and the Ministry of Justice is working with it to improve the support they provide.”

Disgraceful

First of all, the MJSS does not provide help to those who have had their convictions quashed on appeal – it only provides that limited assistance to a tiny minority of such people. It shamefully reneged on a commitment to help Tony Paris and Yusef Abdullahi eight years ago to protect its funding, which included their wages.
The fact remains that there are several victims of miscarriages of justice who receive no help at all from the MJSS. If McNally is unaware of this, he ought to be ashamed of himself. The MJSS had the opportunity to help and improve the so-called service it provides eight years ago. It chose to sacrifice the interests of the undeniably innocent to protect its wages, claiming it was to protect its funding.
That disgraceful decision helped to cost lives. At least three vindicated people died without living to fifty without receiving any help whatsoever from the MJSS or the Ministry of Justice. Neither can ever make amends.

Exclusion Ordered

The original defendants in the Damilola Taylor case are at least still alive, but they receive no help from the MJSS. They were children when it happened; they had criminal records and were far from angels. So what!
They did not kill Taylor and they did not ask to be wrongly accused of a crime that shocked the nation. They have been compensated now after a long and hard battle and even that is resented. Why?
Where is the anger at the shoddy investigation that secured abysmal evidence from the child witness referred to as ʻBromleyʼ? Where is the anger at the utter incompetence of Sian Hedges that resulted in the wrongful release of the Preddie brothers (Ricky and Danny)?
The outrage at the size of the award given to two brothers (not the Preddies) is totally misplaced. They deserve compensation – at least that amount, but the size of the award given to Taylorʼs family is insulting. That should be addressed by increasing the award made to Taylorʼs family, not by attacking the award made to boys who stood trial when they should not have.

Motes and Specks

Meanwhile, we allow the undeniably innocent to be treated in a fashion that shames each and every one of us. That mainstream media ignores this scandal disgraces them too. That governments of both political hues refuse to act to end this outrage betrays every concept of justice.
They go to war in foreign fields to defend human rights, yet these hypocrites tolerate and ignore the human rights abuses that they allow to occur right here in Britain. By what right do they dare to lecture others when this is how they allow people they know to be innocent beyond doubt to be treated? It appears they need considerable assistance to remove the enormous mote from their own eyes, while tackling specks in the eyes of others.

Progress

The Fitted-In Project led the way in highlighting the treatment of these victims and in one of the cases we helped fill the void caused by the betrayal of the innocent with the assistance of a remarkable advocate and champion of restorative justice, Roger Backhouse QC. He led the delivery of after-care in practice to his former client, Yusef Abdullahi, without which, shorn of help and hope, the prospect of recovery was bleak.
While Backhouse and others provided the assistance required to an undoubtedly innocent man, the government and MJSS ignored that manʼs needs and those of the majority of victims of miscarriages of justice.[6]

Even now eight years later, the government has no plans to right the wrong that allowed this shameful injustice to occur. Instead it will consult with the very organisation that betrayed the innocent to protect its funding – shameful!

The Effects of Vindication

Instead of consulting people that played no part in catering for the needs of the vindicated, even at the cost of consigning them to early graves, we call for meaningful research that will boost our understanding of a shamefully neglected group of victims of miscarriages of justice.
The psychological effects of vindication remain a mystery. The vindicated are no more innocent now than they always were. The difference is that now they are believed by all but those who refuse to see. But what about the effects on vindication? Has the very thing they craved actually damaged them?
For many years they suffered whispering campaigns, including among so-called friends and developed paranoid reactions to their own communities, wondering who believed them and who didnʼt. Friendships and other relationships broke down under the strain of the certainty they now have against their knowledge that they should have been believed and supported to the hilt earlier.

Justice Betrayed

Feeling hurt – betrayed even – by people they trusted, but whose support was not strong enough, the vindicated may need extra support, or at least understanding. That requires research and it must include the psychological effects of tariff abuse.
Some vindicated people have seen the truly guilty receive more lenient tariffs than they did. How can this be justified and what effect does it have on the mental well-being of the vindicated? There is not so much a dearth of research on this – it is virtually non-existent.
Tariff Reform and after-care, especially in relation to the vindicated, are the flagship projects of The Fitted-In Project. They even involve sport as a means to aid their recovery.
We believe that research is essential on both topics and we are conducting it, but there are areas that we cannot cover as efficiently as we would like, so we call on the Clinical Forensic and Legal Medicine Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, other organisations and individuals to join us in facilitating understanding of the psychological effects of vindication in terms of after-care needs and also tariff abuse through research. We hope that its members will research these issues, or facilitate research projects with us on these issues.
It is through knowledge that their needs can be addressed, but first they need to be understood – that is a task to be led by professionals in the field through rigorous research. It is in our opinion an essential tenet of another integrated approach – one that integrates the vindicated back into society and the life they should have had.

[1] An indication of the importance of an integrated approach can be seen in Equality of Arms, at http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=690  for more on this case and others too.

[2]  Subsequently, a sixth who plainly was eligible has died, so it is too late for him too.

[3]  The current government has extended the attack on compensation to demand a standard that appears to demand that the wrongfully convicted must be exonerated – a standard that can prove impossible to meet unless the real perpetrator is brought to justice. Few independent observers believe that Barry George had anything to do with the murder of former gymnast and later television presenter, Jill Dando, but he has been denied compensation on the grounds of exoneration. This is grossly unfair as the criminal justice system rarely makes findings of innocence. A not guilty verdict includes both the innocent and also defendants who have not been proved guilty. The distinction is moot. Similarly convictions are quashed on appeal because they are unsafe. That includes both the innocent and appellants whose convictions were faulty. Again the distinction is moot as neither the trial nor appeal gives a finding of innocence, so how does a wrongfully accused prove that they have been exonerated and are therefore entitled to compensation?

[4] Please note that this was in 2011.

[5] That was correct when this presentation was given to a conference of medical practitioners, which included distinguished forensic pathologists.

[6]    See how we exposed this scandal in A Lack of Care at http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=709 and Who Cared? at http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=707

Inadequate

Miscarriage of justice victim Yusef Abdullahi was shamefully denied the after-care that he was entitled to. Despite years to research the issue, the Home Office failed to ensure that the needs of miscarriage of justice victims were considered when devising a service for them. The Home Office Working Group charged to establish the service and the consultant they used failed to talk to those who would need the service.

Instead they decided what was needed and got it wrong – hopelessly wrong. They also allowed an outrageous mistake to be made that excluded the vast majority of miscarriage of justice victims from receiving even the limited assistance that the scheme provided. Nevertheless, this did not stop the government from making claims about the service that simply was not true.

Erroneous Response

Ministry of Justice Minister Baron (Tom) McNally, responded to a written question about after-care from Baron (John) Laird. As follows: “The Ministry of Justice funds the Miscarriage of Justice Support Service (MJSS) to help those who have had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal. The MJSS provides help with issues such as healthcare, accommodation, finance and relationships. The MJSSʼ funding has recently been extended for a further year to March 2012 and the Ministry of Justice is working with it to improve the support they provide”.

Unfortunately, this is not true. At best it provides those services to a very small minority of those whose convictions have been quashed. It does not provide those services to all victims of miscarriages of justice as McNally later acknowledged. Eight years after that error deprived Abdullahi and others of that help nothing has changed. That was shameful.

Misinterpreted

Yusef Abdullahi was wrongly convicted in 1990 of the Valentine’s Day 1988 murder of Lynette White along with Stephen Miller and Tony Paris. John Actie and his cousin the late Ronnie Actie were acquitted. All five were vindicated in 2003 when Jeffrey Gafoor pleaded guilty to Lynette’s murder. It was the first time that this had happened in Britain through DNA testing.

The Miscarriages of Justice Project (MJP) was established that year after a Home Office Working Group had considered the issue, but their consultant misinterpreted his terms of reference and excluded anyone whose conviction was quashed on a first appeal. And if, like Colin Stagg, they had never been convicted at all, they were not even considered for help by the Working Group. The scheme – a limited advice service – was restricted to those referred back for appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, or an out of time appeal.

Untruths

“The Ministry of Justice funds the Miscarriage of Justice Support Service (MJSS) to help those who have had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal,” said the Minister of State at Ministry of Justice, Baron (Tom) McNally in a written response to Baron (John) Laird’s query.

“The MJSS provides help with issues such as healthcare, accommodation, finance and relationships”, McNally wrote. “The MJSS’ funding has recently been extended for a further year to March 2012 and the Ministry of Justice is working with it to improve the support they provide”.

There is a slight problem with this response; it is not true. The remit and funding agreement of the MJSS does not allow it to help anyone whose conviction was quashed on an in-time first appeal and never had. It is restricted in who it helps and actually excludes the overwhelming ajority of victims of miscarriages of justice.

Fend for Themselves

Almost eight years ago I asked the Miscarriages of Justice Project as it was called then to go and visit Yusef Abdullahi and Tony Paris in Cardiff. They agreed, but reneged on the agreement, claiming that it would affect their funding and therefore ability to help others. It was an uncaring response from people whose job it was to provide care.

Abdullahi in particular really needed help then. It was the least he deserved, but instead he was left to fend for himself. The MJP decided that it could not help him, because he did not come under their remit, which has not been changed. They did not even point out the absurdity of not being permitted to provide help to demonstrably innocent people. They even had the cheek to ask me to recommend their service to others.

Disgraceful

If he had asked for their help, he would have been referred to his local Citizen’s Advice Bureau (CAB) and they would have been advised that he would call and what to do, rather than receive help from those who had experience of these issues. What use is that? Abdullahi deserved the care he needed – nothing less.

Lord McNally really ought to have known this and the government should right this wrong without further delay. It is already too late for Abdullahi – he died last month aged just 49. Despite being vindicated Abdullahi had been excluded from receiving assistance from the MJSS. The same applies to Ronnie Actie and Phillip Skipper, neither of whom was convicted. They have other things in common. They were vindicated and died without reaching 50. They didn’t qualify for help either. Nor did Colin Stagg. What kind of system is this? What kind of way is this for society to treat its victims?