Six months have passed since South Wales Police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) failed to complete the prosecution of 12 police officers and 2 witnesses for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and perjury. A unique legal action has had to be launched against South Wales Police to force them to return a journalist’s work product that they have unlawfully retained against the wishes of the rightful owner of that property – me.

Over 20 years of work, consisting of taped interviews, papers and letters, were given to officers investigating how one of Britain’s most shameful miscarriages of justice was allowed to happen. Despite the end of those proceedings police not only retain the originals and copies, but insist that they have the right to decide if or even when they will be returned and whether they will be provided to the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) and the IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission).

Investigations into the collapse of the trials last December by IPCC and Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) continue with no deadline or end in sight and the bill continuing to rise without even the possibility of establishing how that miscarriage of justice occurred, or what will be done to prevent recurrence. The terms of reference of both investigations refer only to the collapse of the trial.

I had been due to be a witness in that case as I had gathered important evidence during my research into one of Britain’s first vindication case in a miscarriage of justice in the DNA age. The Cardiff Five (Yusef Abdullahi, John Actie, Ronnie Actie, Stephen Miller and Tony Paris) should never have been arrested, let alone stood trial. The CPS’s Code for Crown Prosecutors makes that very clear, but these men lost a total of 16 years to prison for a crime they did not commit. Abdullahi and Ronnie Actie did not live to see their fiftieth birthdays.

For at least 15 years the CPS has refused to explain why it failed to follow its own Code for Crown Prosecutors, despite its own Sufficiency of Evidence Criteria showing that this was obviously a case that should have been discontinued and quickly. The CPS not only refuses to talk about this wretched failure, but demands I wait an unspecified period after reneging yet again on a previous commitment to explain its conduct. And then they demand patience and cooperation with a process that disgraces any normal notion of justice.

I made it clear that I would not cooperate with the CPS’s investigations, as it is clear that the CPS has no interest in learning the lessons of its numerous failings in this case. They have never investigated their role in this case, let alone cooperated with an independent examination. Unlike South Wales Police the CPS has never apologised to the Cardiff Five, their families, Lynette White’s family and indeed society which pays again and again for the unbelievable incompetence or worse displayed by the CPS over more than 20 years in this one case. If it can happen here imagine how many others this unaccountable organisation has acted with similar disregard for evidence. I cannot cooperate with its investigations and the same applies to the IPCC for different reasons.

South Wales Police responded to my choice to end my cooperation by ignoring that decision and acting unlawfully. I was the only journalist listed as a witness in the ‘Lynette White Inquiry Police Corruption Trial.’ The CPS and Crown Counsel Nicholas Dean QC ensured that I alone could not attend the trial. Investigators into what had gone wrong were given access to my unique work product, papers, letters and tapes. They were loaned to police voluntarily for the duration of that investigation alone.

That process ended 6 months ago. At a meeting with assistant chief constable Matt Jukes and chief superintendent Tim Jones last December I demanded the return of my property. It was after all mine and I had a right to it. It had not been confiscated. It was not the proceeds of crime – they had no right whatever to keep it. Repeated requests were fobbed off. A ludicrous compromise was suggested. I could have copies while they kept the originals and would decide what should happen to them, including giving them to the CPS and IPCC against my wishes.

I have been denied access to my own work for over 6 months since the trial ended, preventing me from using my own work for my soon to be released book. Last week Darren White of Deighton/Pierce/Glynn wrote to South Wales Police was instructed. “As you will be aware, criminal proceedings in relation to this matter have now concluded and Mr Sekar has requested the return of his property held by South Wales Police,” wrote Mr White. “This property has not been returned to him, despite Mr Sekar making it absolutely clear that South Wales Police no longer has his consent to retain his property.

“If South Wales Police will not return our client’s property, please set out the legal basis on which the property is retained.

“If we do not hear from you by 15th June, we will commence legal proceedings on Mr Sekar’s behalf without further reference to you.”

If police can unlawfully retain the property (work product) of journalists and do so without their consent after receiving their voluntary cooperation previously and demand the right to do as they please with it, will any journalist cooperate with them ever again?

Vindicated

The Cardiff Five (Yusef Abdullahi, John Actie, Ronnie Actie, Stephen Miller and Tony Paris) had been vindicated – proved innocent by the conviction of the real killer. Bizarrely, the CPS and Nicholas Dean QC failed to appreciate the lessons of previous prosecutions of police officers over miscarriages of justice.

In the 1990s – a golden decade of miscarriage of justice awareness – a worrying trend emerged. Convictions fell like flies, or seemingly so. Among them were some of Britainʼs most notorious miscarriages of justice. Beginning with the quashing of the convictions of the Guildford Four (Patrick Armstrong, Gerry Conlon, Paul Hill and Carole Richardson) in October 1989 others soon followed. A whole squad – the notorious West Midlands Serious Crimes Squad – was disbanded and numerous convictions were quashed. But despite this there were no successful prosecutions of police officers over those cases.

Watching the Detectives

Former police officer Ged Corley was convicted of being the mastermind of a series of armed robberies. His convictions, based on the word armed robbers turned super-grasses, were quashed in 1990. The Police Complaints Authority (PCA), discredited predecessor of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), investigated a bizarre complaint where the de facto head of the inquiry that convicted Corley, Peter Jackson complained about his own investigation.

Alban Turnerʼs conviction for the murder of Notting Hill Carnival coke-can seller Michael Galvin was quashed in March 1990 as well. His conviction depended on Kevin Sarbutts, whose allegations against the police resulted in a perjury conviction. His allegations against Turner were not investigated. They were to all intents and purposes ignored despite serious discrepancies. That would prove to be far from unusual.

A Gross Pattern of Incompetence

The convictions of the late Paul Darvell and his brother Wayne for the murder of Swansea sex-shop manageress Sandra Phillips were quashed in 1992 in strong terms by three judges headed by the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord (Peter) Taylor. Three officers were acquitted in 1994 despite proof that the original jury had been lied to. Allegedly contemporaneous notes had been written on notebooks issued two months later.

And 1991 saw the collapse of the case against the Tottenham Three (Mark Braithwaite, Engin Raghip and Winston Silcott). That resulted in police being prosecuted, but the previous errors were repeated. Jurors have to believe the original defendants were innocent or they wonʼt convict, especially if the prosecutions are lacklustre, which these were.

Egregious Injustices

These were far from the only miscarriages of justice to plague British justice at that time, but they had something in common – trials of police officers followed, as did acquittals in every case that was contested. Some like the Birmingham Six and Stefan Kiszko were as egregious injustices as could occur, yet despite charges being brought, the accused did not even face trial.

There was a lesson in these prosecutions, or rather there was for those willing to see. In all of the cases that reached trial, the accused police officers employed a simple and reprehensible strategy – a sadly effective one. They turned their trials into retrials of the wrongly convicted. Time after time the CPS failed to grasp the obvious lesson of these cases. Juries would not convict police officers over the miscarriage of justice cases without being convinced that the original defendants had been innocent.

Vindication

The trial of Mouncher et al offered new possibilities. Here was a case where there was no credible doubt about the innocence of the original defendants. They had been proved innocent. Jeffrey Gafoor had pleaded guilty and he was guilty. But the CPS did not have to rely on Gafoor – a man who had knowingly allowed innocent men to suffer wrongful imprisonment for his crime and who had benefited from his assistance to the Lynette White Inquiry Phase III investigation in the form of a reduction in the tariff he received.

An integrated approach to the crime-scene evidence, forensic pathology, blood distribution pattern and later DNA would prove consistent with only one interpretation. Lynette Whiteʼs horrific murder had not been witnessed by two or even four people forced to participate in it. There had not been five killers or even three. The evidence demonstrated unequivocally that there was only one killer – a man and his name is Jeffrey Gafoor. It proved that the Cardiff Five were, as they had always insisted, innocent. It had been proved beyond doubt.

Lessons

If the CPS and counsel it instructed had learned the lesson of all the previous failed prosecutions of police officers in the miscarriage of justice cases, they would have realised that their first and most important task was to convince the jury that there was no credible doubt that the Cardiff Five were innocent and that the evidence had established this fact many moons ago. Then and only then would a jury care.

They had this evidence available to them from a very credible witness that there was no doubt about their innocence, but the jury were denied his evidence. If the CPS and its counsel had done their jobs to the standard the public had a right to expect, the ground would have been cut from beneath the feet of the reprehensible tactic of accusing men who had been proved innocent before it was given the opportunity to sully justice further.

Sadly the CPS trod the discredited path yet again and wasted public resources botching yet another prosecution of police officers in circumstances where it was harder to lose than win, but they managed to snatch a pathetic defeat from the jaws of victory.

Damage Limitation

The Police Corruption Trial of the Century ended in farce on December 1^st 2011 – a nine year investigative process had resulted in convictions of three vulnerable witnesses and no others. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), prosecutor Nicholas Dean QC and defence lawyers – police even – all accepted that they had been forced to lie (see Duress and The Lawʼs An Ass). Nevertheless, the law did not recognise the duress that they had suffered.

Mark Grommek, Angela Psaila and Learnne Vilday therefore had no choice but to plead guilty to perjuring themselves.¹ Having done so, they were treated leniently due to the bullying they had endured by police officers who had in the words of the judge used methods that were “unacceptable in a civilised society”.

The New Cardiff Three were sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. By March 2009 the CPS announced that 13 police officers (some of whom had retired) had been charged with a variety of offences including conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and perjury. Two witnesses also faced those charges. They had no intention of going down meekly. However, this would prove to be a poorly prepared prosecution marred by penny-pinching foolishness that would ultimately cost the public millions more and deprive us all of the accountability and answers we have waited years to discover.

The Judge

Despite the seriousness of the case it was destined to be heard in Swansea before Mr Justice (Sir Nigel) Sweeney. The judge had been involved in prosecuting a notorious crime – the Chillenden attack on the Russell family which left Lin Russell and her daughter Megan and dog Lucy dead and Josie Russell fighting for her life.

Sweeney knew that the Crownʼs pathologist – albeit subsequently discredited – suggested that there had been significant contact between the killer and a bootlace used to strangle the unfortunate Megan. There was no disputing that the contact was substantial and that the killerʼs DNA would have been on the lace, but Sweeney knew that Michael Stoneʼs DNA was not on that boot-lace. This was strong evidence of innocence, but a fanciful explanation was advanced and Stoneʼs defence accepted the Crownʼs willingness to stipulate that Stoneʼs DNA and fingerprints had not been discovered at the crime-scene.

The Crown claimed that Stone – a habitual drugs-user – had obtained the lace from another user and had used it to restrain Megan. Somehow despite putting substantial pressure through the lace onto his fingers he had not deposited his own DNA while both Meganʼs and the unknown drug-user he had allegedly obtained the lace from remained on it, or at least alleles (bands in the DNA testing system used did).

It was obvious that the far more probable explanation of the unidentified male DNA at the relevant points on the lace was that it had been shed by the killer. It was yet another example of a convenient interpretation of the DNA results – one that stretched credibility and most probably contributed to an egregious miscarriage of justice. Sweeney was either aware of the fanciful nature of the explanation that he relied on, or he should have been.

Precedent Ignored

Stone was convicted again in September 2001 and subsequently lost an appeal. An application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) failed to present the compelling scientific evidence of innocence. He remains in prison for very serious crimes that he did not commit in circumstances where strong evidence supporting his claims of innocence has never been heard by any court or even the CCRC.

By this time a very significant miscarriage of justice – a Dutch vindication case had thoroughly unravelled. The Schiedammer Parkmoord has been covered in considerable detail by us (see the various articles on that case). Astonishingly the significance and potential of that case remains largely ignored by supporters of Stone, lawyers and media all professing to champion his innocence even though the methods used in that case to prove the innocence of Kees Borsboom are plainly apt in Stoneʼs case.

Shamefully, the scope to prove him innocent remains ignored while an almost certainly innocent man languishes in prison while an expert who has first hand experience of the issues involved is denied the opportunity to test his claims of innocence. Sweeneyʼs role in securing this miscarriage of justice has never been subjected to public scrutiny. Over a decade later no media apart from us even mentions it, let alone investigates it.

Damage Limitation

The Police Corruption Trial of the Century ended in farce on December 1^st 2011 – a nine year investigative process had resulted in convictions of three vulnerable witnesses and no others. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), prosecutor Nicholas Dean QC and defence lawyers – police even – all accepted that they had been forced to lie (see Duress and The Lawʼs An Ass). Nevertheless, the law did not recognise the duress that they had suffered.

Mark Grommek, Angela Psaila and Learnne Vilday therefore had no choice but to plead guilty to perjuring themselves.¹ Having done so, they were treated leniently due to the bullying they had endured by police officers who had in the words of the judge used methods that were “unacceptable in a civilised society”.

The New Cardiff Three were sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. By March 2009 the CPS announced that 13 police officers (some of whom had retired) had been charged with a variety of offences including conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and perjury. Two witnesses also faced those charges. They had no intention of going down meekly. However, this would prove to be a poorly prepared prosecution marred by penny-pinching foolishness that would ultimately cost the public millions more and deprive us all of the accountability and answers we have waited years to discover.

The Judge

Despite the seriousness of the case it was destined to be heard in Swansea before Mr Justice (Sir Nigel) Sweeney. The judge had been involved in prosecuting a notorious crime – the Chillenden attack on the Russell family which left Lin Russell and her daughter Megan and dog Lucy dead and Josie Russell fighting for her life.

Sweeney knew that the Crownʼs pathologist – albeit subsequently discredited – suggested that there had been significant contact between the killer and a bootlace used to strangle the unfortunate Megan. There was no disputing that the contact was substantial and that the killerʼs DNA would have been on the lace, but Sweeney knew that Michael Stoneʼs DNA was not on that boot-lace. This was strong evidence of innocence, but a fanciful explanation was advanced and Stoneʼs defence accepted the Crownʼs willingness to stipulate that Stoneʼs DNA and fingerprints had not been discovered at the crime-scene.

The Crown claimed that Stone – a habitual drugs-user – had obtained the lace from another user and had used it to restrain Megan. Somehow despite putting substantial pressure through the lace onto his fingers he had not deposited his own DNA while both Meganʼs and the unknown drug-user he had allegedly obtained the lace from remained on it, or at least alleles (bands in the DNA testing system used did).

It was obvious that the far more probable explanation of the unidentified male DNA at the relevant points on the lace was that it had been shed by the killer. It was yet another example of a convenient interpretation of the DNA results – one that stretched credibility and most probably contributed to an egregious miscarriage of justice. Sweeney was either aware of the fanciful nature of the explanation that he relied on, or he should have been.

Precedent Ignored

Stone was convicted again in September 2001 and subsequently lost an appeal. An application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) failed to present the compelling scientific evidence of innocence. He remains in prison for very serious crimes that he did not commit in circumstances where strong evidence supporting his claims of innocence has never been heard by any court or even the CCRC.

By this time a very significant miscarriage of justice – a Dutch vindication case had thoroughly unravelled. The Schiedammer Parkmoord has been covered in considerable detail by us (see the various articles on that case). Astonishingly the significance and potential of that case remains largely ignored by supporters of Stone, lawyers and media all professing to champion his innocence even though the methods used in that case to prove the innocence of Kees Borsboom are plainly apt in Stoneʼs case.

Shamefully, the scope to prove him innocent remains ignored while an almost certainly innocent man languishes in prison while an expert who has first hand experience of the issues involved is denied the opportunity to test his claims of innocence. Sweeneyʼs role in securing this miscarriage of justice has never been subjected to public scrutiny. Over a decade later no media apart from us even mentions it, let alone investigates it.

Duress – A Legal Quagmire
Mark Grommek, Angela Psaila and Learnne Vilday (the New Cardiff Three) were told that they had a responsibility to tell the truth and should have reported what had been done to them. The prosecutor, Nicholas Dean QC, said that they had time to tell before the committal hearing and trials, but who should they have told? Vilday had tried more than once to tell the truth. Each time she was brought back into line. Psaila tried as well and she too was brought back into line. Grommek stuck rigidly to the script, although he fought his corner on duress hardest of all. They plainly believed that they had no choice but to lie and Vilday at least had indeed tried to tell the truth as Dean and the CPS had demanded. It did her no good.

These witnesses were being looked after by police officers who had not been involved in the original inquiry. They also had access to court officials before giving evidence. According to their prosecutors they should have told the truth to either those police officers or the officials of the court. This took no account of the psychological trauma they had suffered and also the legal and political climate of the time.

What would have happened if they had done precisely what Dean demanded of them? An investigation would have followed, which would have been their word against the police they accused of bullying them without the certain knowledge we now have that they had indeed been lying about the guilt of the Cardiff Five. What was the likelihood of them being believed?

In March 1990 Alban Turner, wrongly convicted of murdering Michael Galvin at the 1987 Notting Hill Carnival was freed on appeal. The star witness Kevin Sarbutts had retracted, alleging serious police malpractice. The now defunct Police Complaints Authority (PCA) investigated those allegations. His lies against Turner, which he admitted to, were never investigated. Sarbutts was convicted by a jury that asked for him to be treated leniently. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

A Dangerous Precedent

If they had told the truth earlier they would almost certainly have shared the fate of Sarbutts. His complaint to the PCA was used to prosecute him for perjury, but not in relation to his self-confessed lies about Turner. He was prosecuted and convicted of perjury in 1994 for his claims of police malpractice. If the New Cardiff Three had told the truth between December 1988 and November 1990, they would in all probability have gone to jail then and for longer, but for what they said about the police – the very things Mr Justice Maddison’s court accepted were true.

Vilday and Psaila pleaded guilty when told they would be sentenced on one count rather than the three they were charged with. Grommek elected to be tried, pending a decision on whether duress could be a defence to perjury. Mr Justice Maddison eventually decided that duress was no defence to perjury, so Grommek changed his plea to guilty. He had been left with no choice, but he was left with the three counts. They were convicted due to the laws on duress to perjury charges and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment each, despite the judge branding police conduct to them as: “unacceptable in a civilised society”.

Another Miscarriage of Justice

They now want their convictions quashed and a public inquiry. But this requires a change in the law. If what happened to them does not count as duress, then the law is wrong. The unacceptable conduct resulted in statements containing a perjury warning, but it had the opposite effect to that intended by those who drafted that law. Instead of preventing perjury it led inexorably to the evidence they were forced to give. They had no realistic choice but to do as they did back then – perjure themselves.

20 years later they were prosecuted for doing what they were forced to. The criminal justice system accepts that they have now told the truth about what was done to them in 1988, but the law offers them no remedy, just a criminal conviction – the only people held legally accountable for the miscarriage of justice that befell the Cardiff Five.

On any normal definition of the term the New Cardiff Three are victims of a shameful miscarriage of justice – one that offers a stark warning of what will happen even if witnesses have compelling proof that they were forced into perjuring themselves. Meanwhile, the officers whose conduct was branded ‘unacceptable in a civilised society’ were told that they would face trial – a trial that would later collapse in farcical circumstances.

Continue to Exceptional Injustice P.5

A Deeply Flawed Process
We had hoped that the inquiry into what went wrong, which began in July 2003, would mean that our task had been completed. There was a lot of material to go through and the whole process took over eight years only to end in abject failure. Thirty-four people involved in that case – 20 were serving or retired police officers – were arrested and interviewed under caution on suspicion of offences including perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. South Wales Police insisted on conducting the investigation themselves. This was a preventable error. If anything went wrong, which it did, the failure would be blamed on them whether it was their fault or not.

The IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) became involved in 2004 and later the (CPS) Crown Prosecution Service were consulted too. The CPS’s Serious Crimes Department eventually decided which of the 34 would face trial and who would not. Despite only taking silk recently (becoming a Queen’s Counsel) recently Nicholas Dean was appointed to lead the prosecutions. The CPS has never explained why it chose such a comparatively inexperienced QC to lead such important prosecutions.

In 2007 it decided to prosecute the so-called core witnesses – the alleged eye-witnesses – first. Paul Atkins was deemed unfit to stand trial, which left Mark Grommek, Angela Psaila and Learnne Vilday to stand trial on three counts of perjury which began on October 17th 2008. This decision was tactically inept and would have huge consequences later. It would lead to a miscarriage of justice – the second in the same case. It would also demonstrate the fundamental unfairness of the laws on duress – a defence which was denied to these defendants even though everyone present at their trial including judge, jury and prosecution accepted that they had been bullied into making those statements by the police.

The Fruit of the Poisoned Tree

Unlike many The Fitted-In Project saw the injustice of what was happening at the time and our CEO Satish Sekar immediately highlighted it in the Fitted-In Journal. The CPS had used the system and law well – cynically in fact. Prosecuting the three witnesses meant that it could not be accused of favouring them, but there was a problem and their lawyers knew it. Their statements and testimony had been studded with inconsistencies and lies and this had been glaringly obvious for 20 years.

These were the very lies that established them as prosecution witnesses against the Cardiff Five. They had been boxed in to commit perjury by these statements. Surely, the way the statements had been obtained was relevant, or at least it should have been.

They had told the same story – the truth for several months in 1988 – until ‘conduct unacceptable in a civilised society’ turned them into prosecution witnesses in November and December 1988. Once those statements were made – the CPS belatedly accepted that these were extracted under duress – they were trapped, knowing that if they deviated from them they could be prosecuted. Now, without trace of irony in the CPS, they were prosecuted for telling the very lies they had been forced to tell.

The CPS knew that it needed to avoid charging them over those statements, as it was part of their case that these witnesses had indeed been bullied and hectored and subjected to treatment that disgraced the criminal justice system. They were charged over the committal hearings and both trials of the Cardiff Five, but not over their statements. That was deliberate, as the Crown would claim that they had ample opportunity to tell the truth after they had been bullied, but did they?

There was no doubt that these witnesses had lied both in their crucial statements and in evidence at the committal hearing of the Cardiff Five and two trials. The questions that needed answering were why and whether they had any free choice in their actions? This was in fact the classic example of the fruit of the poisoned tree and contributed to yet another miscarriage of justice – something we highlighted when our CEO dubbed them the ‘New Cardiff Three’.

To prosecute people for telling lies that prosecuting authorities accept they were forced to tell is grossly unfair to put it mildly and to deny them access to the clearest proof that they too were victims of scandalous conduct denied them their right to a fair trial.

Continue to Exceptional Injustice P.4