Richard Horwell QC has completed his report and it has been considered by the Home Secretary, who scraped back into Parliament by the skin of her teeth. Amber Rudd has welcomed it – no surprise there. Horwell thinks the failures were due to human error. That contributed to it, but it was at best a lacklustre prosecution. It refused to utilise important evidence that unequivocally proved the Cardiff were innocent, and did so before they stood trial in 1989 and again in 1990. High quality evidence proving this was conspicuous by its absence in the prosecution case in 2011 and even in rebuttal of the outrageous defence. Adding insult to injury the sham processes culminating in the Horwell Report have not even acknowledged that this evidence existed, let alone deal with its exclusion. Rudd welcomes the sham and hopes that this is the end of the story. It is not. Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. In this case, despite the clearest vindication possible, justice has been seen to be denied. It still is. Horwell had an opportunity – albeit limited – to redress a gross wrong. He has failed to do so.

It should now be clear that the approach favoured by South Wales Police and others of aiding the three sham inquiries and refusing to comment on the shameful miscarriage of justice that befell the Cardiff Five and affected the community that had a right to expect the highest standards that it did not receive, has achieved its intent. Whether that force (its highest ranks shared that intent or not) the deliberate prevention of learning the lessons of an utterly shameful miscarriage of justice has occurred because of these processes that had no ability to deliver justice, or intent – their aim was altogether more sinister. The sham processes served their purpose of taking the case off the agenda long enough for it to be forgotten about and the damage that it was perceived that it could cause, limited. The dismal failures of this approach and failed processes have not been addressed. The pathetic platitudes about innocence and miscarriage of justice are risible – contemptible in fact.

All three sham processes the HMCPSI, IPCC and now Horwell achieved their purpose of delaying and ultimately thwarting justice. They were and are the pathetic sham I knew they would be. It was obvious what they would be. The Terms of Reference of all three made that clear. They were a gross waste of public funds and the politicians responsible should be surcharged.

South Wales Police’s PSD stole my work and published it to others in flagrant breach of my copyright, and knowing that I not only did not support these sham processes, but that I viewed them with total contempt. The justification provided for that theft was a year after the fact and demonstrably wrong in law – it is astonishing that Police Complaints Commission (it has to demonstrate independence in practice for me to call it Independent) failed to notice that. The fact that South Wales Police see nothing wrong with the department complained of investigating itself and expect me to provide paperwork their officers failed to provide, despite it being made clear that was required, demonstrates bad faith. It is amazing that the so-called complaints procedure and senior ranks who discussed it accept the shoddy note-keeping etc when it suits them, but ignore the fact no note exists of the terms of my cooperation at all. How convenient for them. If that is not properly redressed I reserve the right to take whatever action is necessary regarding it. South Wales Police stole my cooperation for processes they knew I had concluded were designed to cheat justice. They even had the very officer complained about investigating himself!

All three of these shams ignored the original miscarriage of justice and its causes and effects. All three ignored the disgraceful abuse of justice that jailed three vulnerable people (the bullied witnesses I refer to as the New Cardiff Three) that the court accepted had been subjected to conduct that was ‘unacceptable in a civilised society’. The archaic demands of the law on duress was conspicuous by its absence in all three shams. All three failed to notice that the 2011 farce was set up to fail – disclosure providing a neat smokescreen to hide inexplicably crass prosecutorial decisions. An illuminating light will be shone on those decisions in my forthcoming book Trials and Tribulations – Innocence Matters?

I have already detailed some of these failings in my previous books Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry and The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt. Criticisms raised in them of the investigative and judicial processes that led to the notorious miscarriage of justice and maintained it even after vindication, are conspicuous by their absence in the three shams. The failure to use compelling scientific evidence even after a deplorable and utterly false defence was advanced in 2011 trial is disgraceful. Where was the analysis of that in the three sham processes?

The processes that South Wales Police and others supported have failed miserably. Rather than reward mediocrity and gross injustice, if any truly care about justice they will not only join me in demanding a Truth and Justice Commission into the whole case, but campaign actively until that Commission is established. Justice and integrity demand nothing less!

Anniversary

Thirteen years ago today Jeffrey Gafoor made history. Gafoor pleaded guilty to the murder of Lynette White. She was the victim of what was then (February 14th 1988) the most brutal murder of its type in Welsh history. Faced with overwhelming evidence Gafoor admitted that he had murdered Lynette. He had provided samples for DNA testing before attempting to take his own life in February 2003. Police officers from the Lynette White Inquiry Phase II saved his life.

Phase II was one of the best investigations ever. Led by Detective Chief Superintendent Kevin O’Neill, these officers and the forensic scientists, did a fantastic job. They knew that finding the real killer would come at a huge price to the force. No British police force had ever resolved a miscarriage of justice by convicting the real killer in the DNA age. Any force that did so knew that it would unleash a can of worms, the like of which British policing had never faced before. But still, they investigated doggedly and continued until they made history by bringing Gafoor to justice.

A Colossal Error

And then that storm was unleashed. Phase III investigated what went wrong – who was responsible for one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice ever. Thirty-four people were arrested and interviewed under caution on suspicion of offences including conspiring to pervert the course of justice and perjury. Twenty of them were police officers and 13 were told that they would face trial, along with two civilian witnesses.

But before they faced trial three of the alleged eye-witnesses were tried for perjury and conspiring to pervert the course of justice. Mr Justice (Sir David) Maddison ruled that they could not claim duress, as the law demanded that they must retract immediately, but to whom – police officers, the courts? Who? How could they be expected the courts or police after what they had gone through?

Mark Grommek, Angela Psaila and Learnne Vilday (the New Cardiff Three) were convicted – rightly as the law said, but wrongly according to justice and conscience. The court accepted that they had told the lies they were forced to tell and then they were prosecuted for telling them. They were each sentenced to 18 months in prison. This was and remains a huge injustice – the law could not have acted more inappropriately, but worse would soon follow.

Travesty

With 13 police officers and two witnesses due to face trial it was decided that eight former officers, including Graham Mouncher and Richard Powell and the witnesses Ian Massey and Violet Perriam would face trial first. The trial began in 2011. I was due to be a witness against Massey. Nicholas Dean QC and his prosecution team ensured that I would miss virtually all the trial for no good reason – actually there was a very good reason.

We were not meant to see what was unfolding. It would take a very long time to unravel, but unravel it would. The trial collapsed on largely spurious grounds. Disclosure was not what it should have been – that is unarguable, but whose fault is that? The straw that broke the camel’s back was the failure to disclose some documents – copies actually. The originals had been retained, and copies were taken.

The copies were meaningless. It was believed that they had been destroyed – evidence to that effect was given, but it was not true. A month after the sensational collapse of the trial the supposedly destroyed documents were discovered in the very boxes that they had been sent to police by the IPCC.

Unlawful

I had been kept out of the trial until it was far too late – we believe that was their intention all along. South Wales Police chose to cooperate with HMCPSI and the IPCC, both of whom were investigating aspects of the collapse of the trial. The terms of reference established that neither process was worth cooperating with as they would not establish why a notorious miscarriage of justice had been allowed to occur.

I chose not to cooperate and demanded the return of my work product, which was mine alone, as was the copyright on it. The Professional Standards Department unlawfully seized my work and distributed to others against my wishes in flagrant disregard of my rights and copyright.

The justification supplied a year late did not apply to me. Naturally the IPCC – itself an interested party and therefore not an impartial arbiter upheld the ludicrous justification – one that applied to criminal suspects not cooperating witnesses. Both HMCPSI and the IPCC failed miserably to explain why this appalling miscarriage of justice had occurred – inevitable really – as neither was concerned with that and nor was the Home Secretary, Theresa May. Her concern was to avoid a public inquiry.

Squaring the Circle

As early as the first week of the 2011 Police Corruption Trial it became obvious that the prosecution was lacklustre – notwithstanding that the prosecution team could talk a good talk. The defence case was a tried and tested method in such cases – deny that there had ever been a miscarriage of justice. The Cardiff Five were guilty, they claimed. But what about the DNA? What about Gafoor’s guilty plea? What about his insistence that he had acted alone?

Simple. None of that mattered. All that counted were his inconsistent accounts. He could only remember inflicting ten or twelve stab wounds and not the throat ones. So what? Well that meant it was possible that there was more than one attack. “Technically”, Angela Gallup said – the scientific equivalent of ‘and I can’t rule out the possibility that pigs could fly either!’

There was forensic pathology evidence and blood distribution pattern evidence that had an important story to tell. Lynette’s murder was never consistent with five killers and two witnesses charging around the crime-scene in darkness without leaving any trace of themselves or interfering with any of the evidence in the flat.

It simply flew in the face of any notion of logic.

The Final Insults

It served well in 2011 – so well that it was trotted out again in the compensation case in 2015. And as in 2015 the witnesses that could demolish this outrageous hypothesis were never called. We will be publishing Trials and Tribulations – Innocence Matters? soon. The aim is to reassert the truth – the Cardiff Five are, as they always were, totally innocent of any involvement in the murder of Lynette White, even though it is too late to matter to Yusef Abdullahi and Ronnie Actie.

Meanwhile, Gafoor had received a very lenient tariff in 2005 – just 12 years and 8 months, 13 years in reality once remand was taken into account. Consequently, Gafoor is now eligible to apply for release on parole. We will be publishing Bad Form – How Tariffs Protect the Guilty and Punish the Innocent soon to illustrate the grave flaws with the tariff system – one that sees no problem with treating the truly guilty more leniently than the innocent for the same crime. As Lloyd Paris – Tony’s brother – said, “Things are back to front!”

The Eleventh Hour

In two days time Mr Justice (Sir Wyn) Williams will deliver his long-awaited judgement at 11. It’s expected to be a long document, detailing a sorry tale of one of Britain’s most notorious miscarriages of justice. It is expected to determine whether the Cardiff Five suffered a miscarriage of justice at all.

It has become a saga that even Eugène Ionseco the master of Absurdist theatre would have struggled to comprehend. White became black – literally – and now history may not only be rewritten, but obliterated. If Williams rules in favour of the former officers suing South Wales Police, it will turn history on its head and deter attempts to investigate alleged police malpractice in miscarriage of justice cases.

The question of why South Wales Police were allowed to investigate themselves and why the institutions and politicians that they are supposedly accountable to permitted it to happen will be shuffled off into an archive, never to be answered. But it will answer some pertinent questions, not least of which is do we have the police and criminal justice system we deserve?

Pertinent Queries

If we tolerate this, the answer is yes. The Lynette White Inquiry began over 28 years ago. It has seen five innocent men wrongly accused of her murder – three were wrongfully convicted. John and Ronnie Actie were acquitted in 1990. Two years later the convictions of the Cardiff Three (Yusef Abdullahi, Stephen Miller and Tony Paris) were quashed on appeal.

The case was reinvestigated by Phil Jones, the former Head of South Wales Police CID. Jones was later jailed for corruption. His investigation fizzled out after an absurd insistence that police should be allowed to use up all the DNA if they wanted to. They were stopped from doing so and within six months an improved DNA testing system was announced by the now defunct Forensic Science Service. That system was crucial in resolving the Lynette White Inquiry.

A new investigation (Phase II) took four years to complete, but it made history. It became the first miscarriage of justice case in Britain to be resolved by the conviction of the real murderer. Jeffrey Gafoor’s guilt was proved by overwhelming evidence, especially the combination of forensic science and crime-scene evidence. It was in reality a simple tale, which suffered so many twists and turns that it became complicated.

The truth about Lynette’s murder was plain and obvious – don’t take my word for it, the evidence that cannot lie proves it, but in a trial allegedly necessary to put right what had gone wrong, the most compelling evidence of the innocence of the Cardiff Five never saw the light of day.

The Final Insult

Instead, a ‘scientifically ludicrous’ scenario was put forward. Angela Gallop said that it was ‘technically’ possible that there had been two attacks on Lynette. She never came close to saying that is what happened and with good reason. It flew in the face of logic. Gafoor could only remember inflicting 10-12 wounds. He accepted that there were more than fifty, including a vicious slitting of her throat.

The crime-scene evidence was never consistent with two attacks. It was known that the killer had cut himself. His cast-off blood had been located as early as 1988. The inquiry rightly proceeded on the basis that they were looking for a solitary killer – sexually motivated homicides almost always are committed by one person.

It was claimed that there had been two attacks – one by Gafoor and the other by the Cardiff Five, but if this had happened, why was there no trace of any of the Cardiff Five in that flat. The murder happened in the dead of night – there was no lighting. How could five men and at least two ‘witnesses’ have committed that murder and got out without leaving any trace of themselves or interfering with the plethora of evidence tying the real killer to his crime?

How could Gafoor alone have cut himself while inflicting comparatively minor injuries and the others had not? This defied belief, yet it has been repeated in the compensation case too. And yet again rather than call the scientific evidence that demolished this scientifically ludicrous scenario, it is allowed to pass unchallenged. History is being obliterated and the public is expected to foot the bill again without anyone or any institution taking responsibility.

Lessons

The criminal justice system has never listened to Lloyd Paris – its loss. Lloyd shows dignity and decency even though those qualities are sadly lacking in the treatment he has received from it. His brother Tony was one of the victims of a now notorious miscarriage of justice. On Saint Valentine’s Day 1988 20-year-old Lynette White was murdered. It was a knife crime of exceptional brutality – a sexually motivated homicide. The case against his brother and four co-accused depended on a case scenario that Professor Dave Barclay described as “scientifically ludicrous”.

There were dire consequences for the Cardiff Five and their wider families. John and the late Ronnie Actie were acquitted in November 1990. Two years later Stephen Miller, the late Yusef Abdullahi and Tony Paris were freed on appeal, but the whispering campaign against them and subsequent damage continued for years. It ended, or should have in July 2003 when the Cardiff Five were vindicated by the conviction of Lynette White’s real killer.

Bad Form

There were many victims of this terrible case and further insults would occur. The Cardiff Five had lost a total of sixteen years between them for a crime Gafoor admitted he had committed on his own. More importantly, the crime-scene evidence, forensic pathology, forensic psychology, blood distribution patterns and DNA proved that Lynette had indeed been murdered by one person acting on their own and that man was Jeffrey Gafoor. Despite the serious aggravating circumstances, Gafoor receives a tariff – the minimum that he must serve before he becomes eligible to apply for parole – of just thirteen years. Amazingly, both Tony Paris and Yusef Abdullahi had received harsher tariffs for the same crime.

“Well it’s bad form to tell you the truth”, Lloyd Paris said. “You know the type of thing that man done, he should have done a lot more jail. I don’t know what the system’s coming to. They say it takes time for things to go round that slow, but it’s too slow. Everything is going too slow. It took all this time to get the police in court. It took the police all that time to get Gafoor. It’s silly. It really is silly”.

Max Hilll QC, then Vice President of Bar Association agreed that it would look odd to the public. “[Y]ou identify a need for precision in sentencing in miscarriage cases”, Hill said. “I’m happy to discuss that because clearly from a distance if as you tell me in the Lynette White case there was a sentence that was applied to those wrongly convicted, which was heavier than the person ultimately rightly convicted, to many people that would appear wrong and the question behind that may be, do you need to do something about tariff sentencing to ensure that doesn’t happen?”

(We will be answering this question in our forthcoming report Just Tariffs, and highlighting the problem in further articles).

The Western Mail’s Chief Reporter, Martin Shipton, believes that changes are required. “Well it suggests that there is something seriously wrong with the way in which tariffs are arrived at”, he said. “Now whether that is because there is insufficient guidance available to judges, whether the policy has changed over the intervening years, I’m not sure”. But Shipton is clear that there can be no excuses for innocent people receiving harsher tariffs than the innocent for the same crime, differences in when legal proceedings occurred, notwithstanding.

“Well it seems ludicrous that the tariff for the real killer is actually – ultimately – even when we are told that the fact that he allowed innocent people to go jail is taken into account is actually lower than the total amount of time that was spent in prison by the innocent people” [my emphasis].

Significance

Today, the real and sole murderer of 20-year-old Lynette White, becomes eligible to apply for parole. Jeffrey Gafoor admits that he alone is responsible. In the early hours of Saint Valentine’s Day 1988, Lynette was stabbed over fifty times. Her throat was slit. Still Gafoor continued his vicious attack. He stabbed her breasts and chest repeatedly – at least half of the offensive injuries were to that area of her body. The attack continued after she was dead or dying. The brutality obviously went far beyond what was required to kill her. It was cruel and in my view torture. Gafoor has never explained why Lynette suffered this horrific fate. And he has not explained why he stayed silent while five innocent men stood trial for a crime he admits he committed on his own.

The Cardiff Five ((Yusef Abdullahi, John and Ronnie Actie, Stephen Miller and Tony Paris) were charged with Lynette’s murder in December 1988. Almost two years later the Actie cousins were acquitted and the Cardiff Three were wrongfully convicted. It is now acknowledged to be one of Britain’s most notorious miscarriages of justice. It was quite obviously a sexually motivated homicide, even if that was not the label in use in the 1980s and ’90s.

Professor Dave Barclay conducted a review of the scientific evidence, which led t the vindication of the Cardiff Five and a measure of actual justice for the memory of Lynette White. He explains the significance of the crime being a sexually motivated homicide. “All but a very few are on the breasts, but sheʼs had her neck cut as well and wrists and so on”, he said. “Thereʼs a slash across the face. Itʼs a sexually motivated homicide – full stop. [I]tʼs a sexually motivated homicide and donʼt forget those stab wounds are through the puffa jacket and clothing and yet theyʼre still, theyʼre all concentrated on the breasts. Itʼs a single male sexually motivated homicide” [my emphasis].

So why the emphasis? Sexually motivated homicides are almost always committed by one man acting on his own, like Gafoor. Sometimes two vicious people combine and encourage each other to commit such crimes. Barclay and others cannot provide a single example in all the annals of crime where a murder like this was committed by five men, who made accomplices of two other sex workers, but let them live after committing such an evil crime. And all of this was allegedly done without leaving any trace, tying them to the scene or victim in total darkness. Sadly, Barclay has never given evidence about all this and more. So what would he have said if he had been given the chance? “Interestingly I give evidence more in Holland and places like that where they seem quite happy to have people give an overview”, he said. “I would have said whereʼs the evidence for any of that bullshit? I might even have said that in court”.

Evidence-led

Barclay demonstrated that the crime-scene evidence, forensic pathology, forensic psychology and blood distribution pattern was only consistent with one explanation. Lynette was murdered by one person acting on his own. That person, by his own admission and guilty plea – and evidence – was Jeffrey Charles Gafoor. For at least nine months the investigation followed the credible evidence – the crime-scene and forensic science wasn’t lying, but the original investigation took a diversion. It derailed the inquiry.

“[I]f you have two possibilities, you need very persuasive evidence to go for the least likely, so youʼve got a single male arguing with a prostitute over a deal and thatʼs what the scientist thought for nine months, or youʼve got this thing where Angela Psaila, [Mark] Grommek, at least and maybe somebody else and the five accused are all tearing round this room, sawing at peopleʼs necks and trying to cut their hands – stuff like this”, Barclay says.

“Angela Psailaʼs supposed to be asked to cut the neck or hands, I canʼt remember, or the wrist, so thatʼs so inherently improbable on every possible level: psychologically, practically and just they couldnʼt do it in that dark room without leaving footwear and finger-marks in blood and if you actually consider something I did after I totalled up the number of people that were supposed to have held the bloody knife”, he continues. “Thatʼs four people, so there are four people with blood on their hands and theyʼre going out without leaving finger-marks in blood or whatever, so I think that was a major thing. Occamʼs Razor is a thing that we use a lot in forensic science, ʻin all probability, the simplest explanation is the correct oneʼ, and you have to be really sure that the simplest explanation isnʼt correct and that was something that was not done either”.

The Cost of Silence

The methods that Barclay used in his review and subsequent work on this case were available in the 1980s and ’90s. There was no reason for this miscarriage of justice to be allowed to occur. Jeffrey Gafoor was the one person who knew for certain that not only were the Cardiff Five innocent, but that they were suffering a grave injustice for his crime. He chose to stay silent and let their lives be destroyed Ronnie Actie and Yusef Abdullahi both died before reaching fifty. John Actie, Stephen Miller and Tony Paris still endure the unjustifiable whispering campaigns in a case that disgraces justice. Meanwhile, the real killer, becomes eligible to apply for parole today after completing a tariff that was incorrectly applied and failed miserably to reflect the crimes Gafoor committed.

There is no excuse for the lives of the Cardiff Five and their families to have been wrecked. There is no excuse for Lynette’s family to have been denied justice for so long. While Gafoor is not responsible for justice miscarrying, his cowardly decision to refuse to take any responsibility for his crime when it mattered destroyed several lives. Do the courses and rehabilitative exercises that he experiences in prison to prepare him for parole bear this in mind? If not, why not? The real and sole killer received an inappropriately lenient tariff that further insults all the victims of this tawdry injustice – one that simply won’t go away until justice is allowed to reign once and for all.

The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt

Satish Sekar

Waterside Press, Hook, Hampshire, 2012, 978-1-904380-76-4 [£16.50]

Firstly, this book was published in 2012 and this review is in early 2016 so there has been a three year gap. However, given the speed at which most miscarriage of justice cases take to be independently reviewed this is no more than the blink of an eye, which in itself should be unacceptable.

This book relates largely to the murder of Lynette White in Cardiff in 1988 following on from which five men stood trial, two were acquitted and three were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Eventually, the real and sole killer was convicted and DNA analysis played a significant role.

The book is written by a man with passion for this case. In my experience, miscarriage of justice cases do not get overturned without at least one person, and preferably a team, constantly driving into the criminal legal system and often against the odds over many years in order to get a proper review undertaken – clearly Mr Sekar was one such person.

As with many miscarriage of justice cases, there were multiple twists and turns and some truly bizarre events had to be accepted by the criminal legal system in order for the scientific results to be explained, the police investigation to continue along its track and ultimately convictions to be achieved. In the case of the murder of Lynette White one scientific issue (there were, as is often the case, several) was with blood grouping: either the Cardiff Five plus another person never previously mentioned by the Police had to be involved in order to account for the blood group results, or one person (not including any of the Cardiff Five) acted alone and it was that person’s blood that was present at the scene. The system chose to accept six offenders contributing to one blood result rather than consider the far more likely scenario of one person and the police investigation being incorrect.

Time of death issues and offender profiling also occurred in this case, the details of which are morbidly fascinating and disturbing because they will be familiar to anyone involved in crime investigation. Having said that, the care with which the scene was re-examined and samples collected from underneath paint years after the crime occurred are impressive and, much as I am loathe to say it, would have a great place in an episode of CSI – and actually be an accurate portrayal of forensic science for a change.

Mr Sekar’s passion for the case is apparent throughout this book. The stories of the Cardiff Five and the other cases to which he refers are incredibly important. At times though it seemed the passion caused some of the detail to be a bit jumbled for a reader unfamiliar with the case to follow and a certain amount of repetition crept in.

However, there can be no doubt that there is a need for books to be written and education to be provided about how these cases occur in the hope that their occurrence diminishes in the future. Miscarriages of justice occur wherever people are involved in making decisions about how they think crimes occurred; I have been involved in re-investigation of three of New Zealand’s most high-profile such cases and there are more on the horizon, so the issues raised by Mr Sekar are international and current.

It is critical there be transparency and open reporting of such cases and this book adds to the growing pile of publications that have been written and need to be written so that we do not become complacent and accept that miscarriages of justice are simply a cost of the investigation of crime. As stated by Michael Mansfield QC in the Foreword, “Questions asked behind closed doors by internal reviews are self-serving and left to collect the dust of darkness.”

As for the point raised by Mr Sekar towards the end of the book, “Knowingly allowing the innocent to suffer wrongful imprisonment, whether convicted or not, should carry a penalty” – anyone who learns about potential miscarriages of justice should not disagree.

Dr Anna Sandiford

by Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (November 14^th 2008)

Incandescent

In April 1996 David Jessel, the then presenter of Channel Fourʼs sadly defunct Trial And Error, was justifiably incandescent with rage. He addressed the media brandishing a copy of Lord Justice (Sir Phillip) Ottonʼs judgment. “This is yet another shoddy judgment in a shoddy case”, fumed Jessel. It would take another seven years for the truth of just how shoddy the then Lord Justice Ottonʼs judgment was to see the light of day.

Gary Mills and Tony Poole had been convicted of the murder of Hensley Wiltshire in January 1990, after a year on remand, but it would take more than six years for the appeal to be heard and that judgment would be more than controversial – it was either cravenly dishonest, or Otton had allowed himself to be misled in spite of the evidence, or he had not examined the evidence which he claimed to rely on.

At its most charitable, he was plainly wrong.

Otton quoted a passage of an interview with Mills, arguing that it dispelled the prejudice of the refusal to disclose the statements of an eyewitness, Ian (Neville) Juke as the passage referred to claims allegedly made by Juke. Otton said, “Moreover, it was an accurate summary of the substance of Jukeʼs second statement”.

But it wasnʼt. A fact that would be acknowledged by both police officers who conducted that interview in a libel trial two years later and many others too. Either Otton (sitting with Mr Justices Keene and Ian Kennedy as they then were) had not read Jukeʼs statements and that passage of interview, or he had delivered a judgment that they must have known was untrue.

Integrity Lacking

We[1] became involved in this case in 1991, because there were several causes for concern about the integrity of this inquiry that bore similarities to the case of the Cardiff Five, which is an acknowledged miscarriage of justice. However, this had unique aspects as well which deserved the publicʼs attention.

Detective Inspector (DI) Trevor Gladding (the number two in the inquiry) had not only perjured himself and perverted the course of justice, but there was a tape-recording that proved it, yet despite the defence having a copy of it, the jury never heard it.

The conduct of Gloucestershire Police, especially that of Gladding and its impact on the integrity of the investigation that convicted Mills and Poole, was deeply troubling. If ever there was an inquiry that not only had to be squeaky clean, but also it had to be seen to be of the highest standards of professionalism and integrity, this was it.

Sadly, it fell far beneath those standards. The 1996 appeal revealed that the extent of police malpractice was greater than had previously been thought. Detective Constables Brian Paine and Mark Cheminais had allowed the witness Paul White to give information in his statement that they knew to be untrue. The appeal judges criticised their conduct, but decided that it would have made no difference because the jury would not have believed White anyway.

Incapable of Belief

There is no question that Whiteʼs evidence was false and should not have been relied on as he claimed to have seen and heard things from the street that beggared belief, but the jury had heard his evidence and they were not aware that he had been treated in a manner that undermined the integrity of the inquiry – an important aspect of this case.

Similarly, the Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed Juke as incapable of belief, yet the glossed over inconsistencies in the account of crucial witness Kimberley Stadden and substituted their own judgment for that of the jury. However, in 1996 this practice was far from rare, even though the law demands that the determination of facts is solely a matter for juries to decide.

Far too often appeal judges usurped the function of the jury and the case of Mills and Poole graphically illustrated the dangers of such an approach. The decision of the Law Lords in the case of Donald Pendleton reiterated that determining facts is the sole domain of the jury and it would eventually prove to be a significant case for Mills and Poole, but usurping the role of the jury would not be the only point of law that these eminent jurists would interpret wrongly.

Tarnished

During their unsuccessful appeal in 1996 and their 1997 appeal to the House of Lords, it was acknowledged that there were three material irregularities, each of which related to police conduct.

There was further evidence that cast the integrity of this inquiry in a very poor light, but the judges and the Law Lords were not convinced that a miscarriage of justice had occurred. By then we were firmly convinced that it had and also that this inquiry fundamentally lacked integrity and the prosecution was severely tarnished at best.

ʻExceedingly Unwiseʼ

Mills and Pooleʼs defence had intended to call Juke as a witness for the committal hearing in order to discover what he had said in his statements to police that the prosecution used their discretion to withhold, but their aims were thwarted because Juke was kept away from it due to the improper interference by DI Gladding prior to the committal hearing.

However, the defence lawyers had a tape of Gladding threatening Juke with arrest if he attended that hearing, but inexplicably this was not played to the jury at the 1990 trial, even after Gladding had denied on oath that the conversation had taken place.

A formal complaint lodged after the convictions proved that Gladding had indeed threatened Juke with arrest and more if he attended the committal hearing, but the investigating officer George Hedges wrongly concluded that Gladding had been mistaken rather than lying in his evidence at the trial.

Tainted

Evidence relied on by the appeal judges to dismiss the 1996 appeal was itself tainted. The judges believed that a passage of interview with Mills was an accurate summary of Jukeʼs second statement and that it dispelled any prejudice from the non-disclosure of that statement, but it did not.

Both officers involved in that interview (a then Detective Sergeant John Jeynes who has since been promoted to Superintendent) and Gladding accepted in evidence that it wasnʼt an accurate summary. Consequently, it increased the prejudice done to Mills rather than dispelled it.

Despite this the CCRC initially refused to refer the case back to the appeal court. Mills and Poole judicially reviewed that decision in December 2001. The judges, Lord (Harry) Woolf (the then Lord Chief Justice) and Mr. Justice (Sir Duncan) Ousley, found that the CCRC had not acted unlawfully or irrationally, but took the extremely rare step of voicing their concern over the case. Lord Woolf said, “Almost every aspect of the prosecution is tarnished”.

Wasted Resources

The CCRC had previously refused to grasp the point that the police malpractice had to be looked at first individually in case any aspect was so outrageous that the convictions had to be quashed and if not, then cumulatively in case, taken together, they so undermined the integrity of the inquiry that the convictions could not be tolerated.

It had assigned the case to a caseworker who failed to see the point and commissioners who also could not grasp it and preferred to completely ignore the points that their solicitor, Raju Bhatt, had raised in order to answer spurious complaints that had not been made. Bhatt had to repeat the actual points he made before opting for judicial review.[2]

This was not a case that the CCRC can take any credit from as the failure of several members of its staff to consider the submissions that had been made adequately caused unnecessary delays in dispensing a measure of justice to Gary Mills and Tony Poole, which resulted in them suffering unnecessary damage.

It wasted public resources that could have been put to better use. The CCRC acknowledges that it got this case wrong, but it has yet to implement procedures to prevent recurrence and formally apologise to them for prolonging their ordeal. We hope that it has improved its procedures to ensure that this never happens again.

[1] The Fitted-In Project did not formal exist then, but many of the people who established it and still participate, knew each other then and were working together. This was one of the cases that demonstrated both that and the need for us to organise formally to achieve our objectives.

[2] Before Bhatt took over the case, exactly the same point that Bhatt subsequently made was put to the CCRC by us. At the very least the CCRC should have answered the point being made, rather than an argument without merit that nobody had made. We hope they have learned that particular lesson.

1 Mr Michael is now the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales. The position replaced Police Authorities with the exception of London, which transferred Police Authority powers to the Mayor of London.

]]> https://fittedin.org/fittedin/?feed=rss2&p=1032 0 https://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=968 https://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=968#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2015 10:49:17 +0000 http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=968 Read more]]> January 20^th 2015

Radio Cardiff

Part One Satish Sekar with Georgina Sammut and Shawty

Satish Sekar discusses the foundation of The Fitted-In Project and why it was re-established on this Community Radio programme. He explains why the vindication of the Cardiff Five was necessary. Sekar details the methods used to secure convictions and consequences of it. He comments on why he holds the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) more responsible than the police for the wrongful prosecutions of the Cardiff Five. Sekar credits the work of Professor Dave Barclay in the eventual vindication of the Cardiff Five and also South Wales Police in correctly solving the murder of Lynette White. He details how they detected Gafoor.

Part Two Satish Sekar with Georgina Sammut and Shawty

Sekar explains the arrest of Jeffey Gafoor and the significance of vindication. There are currently seven such cases in Britain. He explains that there are more victims of these cases and that there has to be processes to explain how justice miscarried. Sekar details the trial of the core witnesses. He calls them the New Cardiff Three, He explains the role of the CPS in another vindication case, that of Phillip Skipper, for the murder of his estranged wife, Karen. It gifted a defence to the real murderer, John Pope, who repeatedly accused Skipper of being the murderer after Skipper had been acquitted and had sadly died. Sekar details how Barclay demolishes the prosecution scenario in the Lynette White Inquiry and why he should have been a witness in the collapsed trial, before explaining why Sekar was prevented from attending the Police Corruption Trial and its consequences. He explains his controversial view that the CPS, rather than South Wales Police are more responsible for the miscarriages of justice and how they have evaded taking responsibility for any of it. Sekar also calls for fiscal responsibility. He says both the IPCC and HMCPSI processes were inadequate.

Part Three Satish Sekar with Georgina Sammut and Shawty

In the third part of these interviews Sekar explains the process of trying to secure accountability from the CPS over the whole case. The CPS refused to answer his complaint – a process that has been ongoing since 1993! He explains how its own Code for Crown Prosecutors proves the Cardiff Five should never have been prosecuted. Sekar details why the CPS has to be held responsible and that Alun Michael has asked questions of the CPS as well. He then explains some projects that The Fitted-In Project conducts and the scandalous treatment that all the victims of vindication cases have been subjected to. Sekar then makes his case for fiscal accountability.