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.

Disbelief

The failure to investigate, let alone prosecute in miscarriage of justice cases is striking. Mervyn ‘Tex’ Ritter expressed disbelief that appeal judges believed him after an unsuccessful appeal by the Bridgewater Four. Despite their exoneration in 1997 there was no prosecution of Ritter or police officers despite compelling Esda (Electrostatic depression analysis) evidence.

The late Gary Mills and Tony Poole’s case is even more disturbing. Despite clear findings of wrong-doing by police officers by two sets of appeal judges, a Lord Chief Justice, a libel trial jury and the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) justice has been denied.

Serious allegations of malpractice including perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice have never been adequately investigated by the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) or the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), let alone considered by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Despite a witness being allowed to lie in his statements to police Paul White has never been investigated for perjury, let alone brought to trial.

Grudging

However, witnesses who claim police malpractice can find themselves charged and condemned. Almost 20 years ago Kevin Sarbutts was jailed for three years for perjury. In 1990 he admitted lying at the trial and second trial of Alban Turner, which resulted in Turner’s wrongful conviction.

Turner was freed on appeal in 1990, but grudgingly by the Court of Appeal, which referred the papers on Sarbutts to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Lord Lane said that it was ʻequally wickedʼ to lie to jail an innocent man or to free a guilty man.

Sarbuttsʼ trial dealt with his allegations of police brutality and misconduct – no charges were brought in relation to Turner. With echoes of the Cardiff Five witnesses’ trial, Sarbutts was treated leniently by His Honour Judge Brian Smedley after a request from the jury for that.

Vindication

Even vindication doesn’t result in investigations, let alone prosecutions. Over a decade after the late Phillip Skipper stood trial for the murder of his estranged wife Karen – a crime committed by John Pope – a witness came forward with a cock and bull story. Pauline Horton claimed that she saw Phillip follow his wife on that fatal night just after she left to walk the dogs.

It allegedly broke Skipper’s alibi and saw him wrongly accused by Pope’s defence at his 2010 appeal and in his subsequent retrial. Her own evidence established that she had a restricted view and could only have seen them in darkness for seconds. There has been no investigation of her claims.

Striking

“Perjury strikes at the heart of the criminal justice system”, said Mr Justice (Sir David) Maddison, when he jailed Learnne Vilday, Angela Psaila and Mark Grommek for 18 months in 2008. Vilday et al had been subjected to conduct that was “unacceptable in a civilised society,” Maddison said.

Police faced trial over it, but the trial collapsed in farcical circumstances in December 2011. Consequently, the three core-witnesses remain the only people convicted of helping to cause one of Britain’s most notorious miscarriages of justice.

Lynette White was brutally murdered in 1988 and five innocent men served a total of 16 years in jail for it. It remains the only miscarriage of justice case where witnesses were convicted of lying about victims of a miscarriage of justice since the notorious Ged Corley case.

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