All He Ever Wanted

“All I ever wanted is justice”, says Michael O’Brien, one of the men wrongly convicted of the murder of Cardiff newspaper vendor Phillip Saunders, over 25 years ago. O’Brien has campaigned tirelessly to bring a former DCI (Stuart Lewis) and two witnesses to book for perjury.

“Helen Morris and Christopher Chick admitted perjuring themselves to the CCRC (Criminal cases Review Commission and in a Welsh TV documentary”, O’Brien continues. “They should be prosecuted”.

Despite this strong evidence the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided that there was not enough evidence to prosecute any of them. O’Brien plans to challenge the decision. He points to the one recent example where witnesses were prosecuted for perjury in a miscarriage of justice case – the Cardiff Five.

Precedent

“In that case they found the real killer”, he says. “So what? The evidence in my case is just as strong. It should not be necessary to find the real killer to investigate what went wrong in miscarriage of justice cases”.

Where there is the will it can and has been done, but that is needed. “The police have no intention of finding the real killer in my case”, O’Brien says. “There is plenty of evidence that I was a victim of perjured evidence. I am entitled to the same justice that the Cardiff Five got. Perjurers should be prosecuted – no excuses”.

Steven Bird
(Leading solicitor and Treasurer of the Criminal Appeals Lawyers’ Association)

We highlighted issues that other media have ignored – issues that contribute to the miscarrying of justice and the continued devastation of the lives of all of the victims of these injustices.Yusef Abdullahi was deprived of assistance to rebuild his life despite a government scheme to assist victims of miscarriages of justice. It took 8 years to correct a scandalous error by a Home Office appointed consultant. All other media have ignored this scandal.

Richard Adams
(Father of racist murder victim Rolan and Trustee of The Fitted-In Project)

We offered the BBC unique access to the historic inquiry into what went wrong, having secured unprecedented co-operation from the police. The BBC didn’t bother to accompany us to Cardiff to do so in 2008, refusing to commit to a story it now says is important for them to cover.

Mags Gavan
(BAFTA award-winning documentary-maker)

Sekar was offered an insulting choice by the BBC to take part in the programme by the BBC, which they have not tried to impose on other journalists who have not achieved as much. Sekar agreed to be interviewed, subject to a complaint. The conditions would ensure that his criticisms of the BBC designed to assist the reporting of miscarriages of justice and related issues would never be broadcast.

The Fitted-In Project is concerned about the conditions that the BBC tried to impose and justify even now. Nobody else has been treated like this, especially after an unprecedented achievement. For the truth about the Lynette White Inquiry see Sekar’s books Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry and The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt, which was published recently by Waterside Press.

Stalling Justice

The Police Corruption Trial of the Century had ended in the shambolic farce that some – not me – were always convinced it would be. Now for the first time I can say exactly what I think of the deeply flawed process.

Graham Mouncher, and seven former colleagues in South Wales Police, Michael Daniels, Peter Greenwood, Paul Jennings, Thomas Page, Richard Powell, John Seaford and Paul Stephen were acquitted on the orders of the judge, Mr Justice Sweeney last week. Ian Massey and Violet Perriam were also acquitted.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) threw the towel in without asking for time to try to locate the missing files. Yesterday the charges against the remaining defendants John Gillard, Stephen Hicks, John Murray and Wayne Pugh were dropped – Rachel OʼBrien had already been found unfit to stand trial for health reasons.

Explanation

Page demanded an inquiry into why he and his colleagues were subjected to the inquiry. That was obvious. An investigation carried out by South Wales Police under the auspices of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) had gathered evidence that serious crimes – conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and perjury had been committed during the original Lynette White Inquiry (Phase I).

That evidence had been presented to the CPS which decided whether there was sufficient evidence to justify prosecutions. It concluded that those charged, including Page, had a case to answer. Consequently, they were committed for trial.¹ It was exactly the same process that anyone suspected of a serious criminal offence has to go through.

Unlike the Cardiff Five who were demonstrably innocent – they had been vindicated by the conviction of the real killer and the scientific evidence – Page and his co-defendants had retained their liberty while facing and standing trial.

They ran a sadly predictable defence – a despicable one, but one that had borne fruit previously. They blamed the victims of the proven miscarriage of justice (see Conspiracy of Malice – Predictable). But before the lives of the Cardiff Five could be trashed for nothing error after error had to occur.

Inadequate

Represented by a battery of lawyers at public expense the games began. It soon became clear that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was not up to the task if it ever has been. Despite knowing in advance that lawyers for the eight police officers scheduled to face trial first planned to use disclosure obligation to try to force the collapse of the trial before a single word had been given in evidence, the CPS failed to appoint a Disclosure Officer to ensure that the Phase III officers understood exactly what was required of them.

The CPS chose to sell out the interests of justice in the hope of cutting costs and corners. This wretched penny-pinching would have dire consequences later as Graham Mouncher and his colleagues would shamefully evade judgement by a jury of their peers. The responsibility for that rests squarely on the shoulders of the CPS. The Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney General failed miserably to ensure that the bare minimum of standards were observed in this case.

It ought to have been impossible to botch this case. It was or should have been a slam dunk. The real killer had admitted his guilt. Jeffrey Gafoor had made it clear that he had acted on his own and that the original defendants the Cardiff Five (Yusef Abdullahi, John and Ronnie Actie, Stephen Miller and Tony Paris) had nothing to do with the murder of 20 year-old Lynette White.

Gafoor had allegedly told a different story to his QC John Charles Rees. This ʻlegally privilegedʼ information was disclosed by a third party considering Reesʼ fees for representing Gafoor. But it should not have mattered a whit. Indisputable crime-scene evidence and forensic science proved beyond credible doubt that the Cardiff Five were completely innocent of the murder of Lynette White, that one person had killed her on his own and that this had been known before the Cardiff Five were tried.

The CPS and Dean failed miserably to present expert evidence of this despite having it available to them. This was and remains a wretched and miserably botched prosecution. Whether it was deliberately botched remains to be seen.