Anomaly

The Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, has been asked to correct an anomaly that resulted in a brutal murderer receiving a significantly lower tariff than three entirely innocent men. Jeffrey Gafoor pleaded guilty to the Valentine’s Day 1988 murder of 20-year old Lynette White on July 4^th 2003.

Yusef Abdullahi, Stephen Miller and Tony Paris served four years each before their convictions were quashed in December 1992. John and Ronnie Actie were acquitted after two years on remand in November 1990. Gafoor was arrested following advances in forensic science in February 2003.

Sentencing him to life imprisonment Mr Justice (Sir John) Royce told Gafoor: “You allowed innocent men to go to prison for a crime you knew you had committed”, Royce considered this to be the most important aggravating factor. Despite this the law only allowed the judge to set a tariff of thirteen years.

“I think it is outrageous that he got a lower tariff than us”, said Tony Paris. “He was guilty and we were innocent. He let five men get charged for what he did and three get life sentences. And when you consider that at any time one or all of us could have committed suicide while he remained at liberty, I don’t think that this is genuine remorse”.

Just Tariffs

I proposed reforms to encourage real perpetrators to take responsibility for their crimes and prevent miscarriages of justice, because it would be in their interest to own up before they are caught and brought to justice, to the Law Commission and the Ministry of Justice. The Law Commission’s response was vacuous, as it believes that the system already caters for this eventuality in setting tariffs, as Royce referred to it in setting the tariff that Gafoor must serve.

But his hands were tied. In that case the aggravating circumstances were that it was a particularly brutal crime and that he had allowed men he knew to be innocent to be convicted of a crime that he knew he had committed and serve a total of sixteen years imprisonment. He thought he could have set a maximum of five years for all of that, but chose to set four years and six months.

And in mitigation he set three years and six months for pleading guilty at the ‘first’ opportunity – a mere fifteen years after he took White’s life – and assisting the ongoing inquiry into what went wrong in the original investigation.

Both aggravating circumstances are extremely serious, but the law as Royce saw it only allowed him to have them outweigh comparatively trivial mitigation by just one year. This is not taking it into account; it is an insult.

Judges should be entitled to impose an appropriate tariff based on the individual circumstances of the case that they are considering. Had Royce imposed the full five years he was entitled to for just the brutality of the crime, it would not have been unreasonable, which makes a complete mockery of the claim that the system already takes vindication into account. And this is far from the only flaw in setting tariffs in cases of vindication.

Ignoring Victims

When setting the tariff that Gafoor must serve Royce took into account “powerful statements” on the effect that her murder had had upon them from Lynette’s family. The Cardiff Five were not invited to detail the effect that wrongful imprisonment had on them. Paris thinks that this is unfair and wants the views of victims of miscarriages of justice to be considered prominently when sentencing people like Gafoor, especially when Royce thought that what had happened to them was the most important aggravating circumstance.

“Our feelings should have been taken into account when the judge set his tariff”, said Mr Paris. “We are victims of Gafoor’s crime as well. The law should have given us the same opportunity as Lynette’s family to say what this case has done to us”.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice believes that there is no need for tariff reform, because there are mechanisms to correct miscarriages of justice already. How exactly does treating real perpetrators more leniently than the innocent and preventing judges from setting appropriate tariffs based on the merits of individual cases correct miscarriages of justice, let alone help to prevent them?

Satish Sekar pioneered the concept of vindication. The FIP is proud to launch Vindication – The Last Hope of the Innocent today (September 5th). It aims to ensure that the lessons of cases where victims of miscarriages of justice have been proven innocent by the identification or even conviction of real killers are fully learned. There have been six cases of vindication in Britain in the DNA age, but only one had an investigation of what went wrong – a process that was ultimately betrayed. Vindication – The Last Hope of the Innocent is long overdue.

“This is the story of one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in British history told by Satish Sekar, whose unremitting efforts helped lead to the vindication of the Cardiff Five. They always were innocent, but their freedom was not enough. The memory of Lynette White and her family deserved justice too and that required the conviction of the real killer, Jeffrey Gafoor.This book shows how even a very difficult case can be solved if there is the will to investigate it thoroughly. It details how an awful miscarriage of justice was finally corrected by the conviction of the real killer. Satish’s work was pivotal to achieve this, and he is keen to continue the fight to ensure that the lessons of an extraordinary case are properly learned.”

Steven Bird (Solicitor and Treasurer of CALA)

“I wish Mr Sekar all the best in his work. His passion in ensuring that all available support is directed to those wrongly convicted and incarcerated is admirable.”

The Rt. Hon. Jack Straw (Former Home Secretary and Minister of Justice)

We are delighted to launch Proved Innocent – Vindication. We highlighted the inequity of a system that ignored some victims of miscarriages even though there is no doubt about their innocence. Eight years of refusing to allow the government to ignore an egregious injustice to be ignored resulted in a shameful error being corrected, but too late for Yusef Abdullahi. Despite his innocence being beyond question John Actie is still excluded from the scheme as is Colin Stagg, the original defendants in the Damilola Taylor Inquiry and the family of Phillip Skipper. Disgracefully, the family of victims of crime like Lynette White’s do not qualify either. Proved Innocent – Vindication highlights this affront to justice.

“As a victim of institutional racism I quickly saw the injustice of the case of the Cardiff Five and came to appreciate and admire the work that Satish Sekar put in on that case especially. He cared about all of the victims of that injustice and others too. Twenty years later he continues to fight for justice. His role in that case especially was pivotal – having worked not only to free the innocent, but to bring the guilty to justice. Even after making history in that respect he continues to fight on to bring the system that allowed so gross an injustice to book. There are forgotten or ignored victims of crime. My family has first-hand experience of that. I appreciated Satish’s often unseen efforts to help all of the victims. Sadly, the battle against injustice that brought us together remains to be won.”

Richard Adams (Father of Rolan Adams)

Just Tariffs – Protecting The Innocent is another of our most important projects. We are honoured to launch it here today. It highlights the incredible situation where the truly guilty get treated more leniently than the undeniably innocent for the same crime. Astonishingly this happened after the criminal justice system claimed to have taken into account the fact that such a killer had allowed innocent people to go to prison for his crime. The Law Commission and Ministry of Justice, among others refuse to accept that there is a problem.

“The case of the Cardiff Three, as it is best known, was a miscarriage of justice written in the starkest language. This was the story of three young men convicted of the 1988 murder of Lynette White in Cardiff who were freed on appeal in 1992. It is of particular significance because the real perpetrator of the murder, Jeffrey Gafoor, was finally traced through developments in DNA and, after attempting suicide, confessed to his crime, a crime made worse by the fact that he had allowed others to, as it were, serve his sentence for him. Such vindication, as Sekar explains in this book, is rare. More often, a shadow of suspicion lurks over the innocent man or woman, with unsubtle hints that some of them have ‘got away with murder.’

The Cardiff Three – sometimes called the Cardiff Five, because five men were arrested and charged although only three convicted – was and will remain one of the most crucial cases in the history of criminal justice in the United Kingdom and is worthy of detailed examination. It is not only for what went wrong at the time but for the many other issues it has thrown up in its wake.No-one is better suited to the task of explaining and unravelling the complexities of the story than Satish Sekar whose pioneering work has played a large part in our understanding of the murder and its ramifications. He has ploughed an often lonely furrow in pursuit of the story long after it had slipped from the front pages of the national press. Investigating such cases is a time-consuming and sometimes dangerous occupation.”

Duncan Campbell (Former Crime Correspondent of the Guardian)