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.

Scandalous

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. With a cruel irony – cruel because 20-year-old Lynette White was denied the chance of motherhood that she desired – her murderer becomes eligible to apply for parole after a serving a paltry thirteen years. Twenty-eight years ago on Saint Valentine’s Day Lynette was the victim of what was then the most brutal murder of its type in Welsh history. She was stabbed over fifty times. Her throat was slit more than once. Her murderer continued stabbing her as she lay dying, or even dead.

Tomorrow, of all days, Jeffrey Gafoor, her self-confessed sole killer, completes the excessively lenient tariff that was imposed on him by Mr Justice (Sir John) Royce almost ten years ago. It was a tariff strewn with error, but there’s none as blind as those who refuse to see.

Verging on the sadistic?

When giving his reasons for imposing the tariff, Royce said that Lynette’s murder, “verged on the sadistic”. Lloyd Paris – brother of Tony, who was one of three men wrongly convicted of Lynette’s murder in 1990 – disagrees. “I would say the man was wrong”, he said. “It is sadistic. Well, that was the most sadistic thing that ever happened around me”.

Is there any doubt that it was sadistic? Not for Lloyd Paris.

“Totally, you know. He [Gafoor] says something like, ‘I can remember stabbing her a few times, but I can’t remember the rest. It’s all a haze’. Well he should be able to. Someone should be showing him the facts of what he done, so it’s not a haze no more, so when he starts quoting things, he can say, ‘Yeah, it was a haze but I’ve been told that this was the damage’”.

And he’s not alone in thinking that Lynette’s murder was sadistic. There’s not much that surprises the Western Mail’s Chief Reporter, Martin Shipton, but this does. “Well I don’t know what his perception of the threshold of sadism is, but mine certainly, it would seem, isn’t lower than his” Shipton said with incredulity at the suggestion that it could be seen as anything other than sadistic.

Consequences

It had a considerable effect. If Lynette’s murder had been termed sadistic, the starting point could have been thirty years rather than the fifteen that Royce decided was appropriate.

“Well that’s obviously made a considerable difference, though I’m not clear why he has come to that conclusion, because obviously fifty stab wounds is much more than would be required to kill someone”, Shipton said. “Well that’s a considerable difference clearly. I suppose the prospect this man could be out after fifteen years is quite disturbing given the level of violence that was involved in the crime”.

Lloyd Paris goes further. “That’s where he should have started – simple as”, he said. “It is sadistic. It don’t verge on nothing, you know. The damage done to that poor girl was horrific, so how he could say it verges on sadistic is a joke”.

And there were other problems too. Lynette’s murder was exceptionally brutal. However, there was another serious aggravating circumstance – one that Royce viewed as the most important. Gafoor had allowed five innocent men to go to prison for a total of sixteen years for a crime that he knew he had committed on his own. The tariff should fit the crimes and in this case it plainly did not.

Having set his starting point at fifteen years Royce thought that he could only allow a third for aggravating circumstances. With that starting point he had to include both the brutality of Lynette’s murder and allowing the innocent to suffer in the aggravating circumstances. Five years for both of those aggravating circumstances? “No”, an outraged Lloyd Paris said. “No. Five years is not enough”. It is hard to disagree, especially as Royce only allowed four and a half for both.

Limits

Max Hill QC suggests that there was no limit on Royce regarding aggravating circumstances. “It [a document published by the Sentencing Council] makes it clear that the Coroners and Justice Act, which is the vehicle for this, expects courts to sentence according to the guidelines, but if the court is satisfied that it’s according to the interests of justice to do so, that court can do so and that to me is a clear signal that if there is an unusual feature in a case, which might be an unusual feature that mitigates downwards or an unusual feature that aggravates upwards, every judge has the ability to take that into account and to act on it”, Hill said.

“And so, just before we get into any detail, if you are sentencing someone whose been proven on scientific evidence to be guilty of a serious crime and you are told that there was an earlier prosecution, which led to conviction at a time when the real culprit was living in this jurisdiction and, as it were, did nothing to come forward or to assist, the sentencing judge on being told that, is entitled, using the interests of justice safety valve, to say, ‘Well that is a unique feature of this case and I don’t need anything in black and white in my guidelines to tell me that I can treat that as an aggravating feature’”, he continued, but that was not the issue – the amount was.

After he had taken mitigation into account, Royce decided that the very serious aggravating circumstances only outweighed mitigation by a year. “No, it don’t reflect the enormity”, Lloyd Paris says. “It don’t reflect anything. One year is nothing”.

Miscategorised

But these are far from the only errors of judgement to plague this case. Lynette had not been raped, or sexually assaulted and she was fully clothed, yet this was 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”, Barclay explains. “Thereʼs a slash across the face. Itʼs a sexually motivated homicide – full stop”.

Could there be any doubt? Not according to Barclay and he should know. He has conducted several reviews of homicides, including Lynette’s. “No there cannot be and I use it in my lectures to forensic psychology students and as soon as I say, what sort of murder is this and as soon as I show the picture without the puffa jacket, itʼs 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”.

So was it sadistic? “Well it is quite sadistic doing that sort of stuff”, he said. “No, itʼs a sexually motivated homicide. Sexually motivated homicides are not necessarily sadistic”. Although he would not necessarily use the term sadistic, this was the missing link – this showed that the violence suffered by Lynette was indeed sexually motivated and that should have been considered. The judge mentioned that twenty-five wounds were to her breasts, but tellingly he does not describe it as a sexually motivated homicide, which begs the question, why wasn’t he told that by the prosecution?

Further Error

Having set his starting point at fifteen years, Royce detailed how the policy at the relevant time was to start at twelve years. He felt bound to do the same, but was he? Two other murders that occurred in Cardiff – both sexually motivated and I would say sadistic suggest otherwise. Geraldine Palk was the victim of an even more brutal murder than Lynette in December 1990. Her murderer, Mark Hampson was brought to justice around the same time as Gafoor.

And in 1996 Karen Skipper was murdered. Her estranged husband Phillip was rightly acquitted in 1997. Her real murderer, John Pope, was convicted of her murder in 2009 and again at retrial in 2011. Lady Justice (Dame Heather) Hallett chose a starting point of fifteen years for Hampson. Mr Justices (Sir Nigel) Davis and (Sir Roderick) Evans selected a starting point of fifteen years for Pope. Davis, Evans and Hallett stuck to fifteen years. Either they are wrong or Royce was. There appear to be several grounds to appeal against the leniency of Gafoor’s tariff, but that was not done at the time.

Adding insult to injury, Gafoor appears to have received a very lenient tariff and even that was applied wrongly. At least two of the innocent Cardiff Three, the late Yusef Abdullahi and Tony Paris received harsher tariffs for the same crime. Gafoor could show remorse, do all the courses and progress towards parole in a system designed to help rehabilitate him, while the Cardiff Three could not without admitting a lie that would have prevented their eventual vindication. And now the real killer becomes eligible to apply for parole on Mother’s Day.

Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (June 1st 2011)

Discretion and Valour

Of the seven vindication cases in Britain four of them are no longer eligible for compensation or after-care and it is too late to help a fifth, who would have qualified.[2] The abolition of the Discretionary Scheme for compensation in 2006 denies anyone whose conviction is quashed too soon eligibility for compensation. The current government endorsed that shameful decision.[3]

“The discretionary compensation scheme was abolished on 19 April 2006 by the then Home Secretary and the coalition Government have no plans to reintroduce it,” Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice, Lord (Thomas) McNally replied to a written question from Lord (John) Laird earlier this year.[4]

“We will continue to consider applications for compensation under the statutory scheme, Section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, which fully meets our international obligations.”

Scandalous

That means that some people who have been vindicated would be excluded if their cases were to happen now, but compensation is only part of the problem. There is an even bigger scandal over the provision of care or restoration.
A ludicrous error passed unnoticed nearly a decade ago. The Home Office recognised that victims of miscarriages of justice required and deserved assistance to rebuild their lives. It established a Working Group to consider the issue and establish such a scheme. It was given terms of reference and so was Peter Shore (not the former MP of that name), the Consultant that it hired to conduct a scoping study.
Shore failed to execute those terms of reference adequately and recommended a scheme that excluded the vast majority of victims of miscarriages of justice. Only Sean Hodgson is alive and eligible for the scheme operated by the MJSS, which begs the question, what use is it if it excludes the demonstrably innocent?[5]

To its shame and disgrace it failed to highlight the obvious injustice of its remit excluding among others Colin Stagg. There is plenty of shame and disgrace to go round over this and that includes mainstream media.

Plain Wrong

The term injustice is grossly inadequate to describe the suffering that Stagg and others like him went through. If he is not the victim of a miscarriage of a justice, the term has no meaning. Stagg is entitled to more than just compensation for what happened to him.
He did not ask for what happened to him to occur and is in no way responsible for the incompetence and unethical practices that ruined his life. He will always be identifiable as the suspect in the Rachel Nickell case regardless of his proven innocence.
At last he has now received apologies for what he went through, but the state has an obligation to restore him to the life that he should have had if that miscarriage of justice had not happened to him. That has not happened and the coalition government has no intention of ensuring that it does. In fact, its ministers donʼt even know its own policy.
“The Ministry of Justice funds the Miscarriage of Justice Support Service (MJSS) to help those who have had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal,” McNally replied to Laird. “The MJSS provides help with issues such as healthcare, accommodation, finance and relationships. The MJSSʼ funding has recently been extended for a further year to March 2012 and the Ministry of Justice is working with it to improve the support they provide.”

Disgraceful

First of all, the MJSS does not provide help to those who have had their convictions quashed on appeal – it only provides that limited assistance to a tiny minority of such people. It shamefully reneged on a commitment to help Tony Paris and Yusef Abdullahi eight years ago to protect its funding, which included their wages.
The fact remains that there are several victims of miscarriages of justice who receive no help at all from the MJSS. If McNally is unaware of this, he ought to be ashamed of himself. The MJSS had the opportunity to help and improve the so-called service it provides eight years ago. It chose to sacrifice the interests of the undeniably innocent to protect its wages, claiming it was to protect its funding.
That disgraceful decision helped to cost lives. At least three vindicated people died without living to fifty without receiving any help whatsoever from the MJSS or the Ministry of Justice. Neither can ever make amends.

Exclusion Ordered

The original defendants in the Damilola Taylor case are at least still alive, but they receive no help from the MJSS. They were children when it happened; they had criminal records and were far from angels. So what!
They did not kill Taylor and they did not ask to be wrongly accused of a crime that shocked the nation. They have been compensated now after a long and hard battle and even that is resented. Why?
Where is the anger at the shoddy investigation that secured abysmal evidence from the child witness referred to as ʻBromleyʼ? Where is the anger at the utter incompetence of Sian Hedges that resulted in the wrongful release of the Preddie brothers (Ricky and Danny)?
The outrage at the size of the award given to two brothers (not the Preddies) is totally misplaced. They deserve compensation – at least that amount, but the size of the award given to Taylorʼs family is insulting. That should be addressed by increasing the award made to Taylorʼs family, not by attacking the award made to boys who stood trial when they should not have.

Motes and Specks

Meanwhile, we allow the undeniably innocent to be treated in a fashion that shames each and every one of us. That mainstream media ignores this scandal disgraces them too. That governments of both political hues refuse to act to end this outrage betrays every concept of justice.
They go to war in foreign fields to defend human rights, yet these hypocrites tolerate and ignore the human rights abuses that they allow to occur right here in Britain. By what right do they dare to lecture others when this is how they allow people they know to be innocent beyond doubt to be treated? It appears they need considerable assistance to remove the enormous mote from their own eyes, while tackling specks in the eyes of others.

Progress

The Fitted-In Project led the way in highlighting the treatment of these victims and in one of the cases we helped fill the void caused by the betrayal of the innocent with the assistance of a remarkable advocate and champion of restorative justice, Roger Backhouse QC. He led the delivery of after-care in practice to his former client, Yusef Abdullahi, without which, shorn of help and hope, the prospect of recovery was bleak.
While Backhouse and others provided the assistance required to an undoubtedly innocent man, the government and MJSS ignored that manʼs needs and those of the majority of victims of miscarriages of justice.[6]

Even now eight years later, the government has no plans to right the wrong that allowed this shameful injustice to occur. Instead it will consult with the very organisation that betrayed the innocent to protect its funding – shameful!

The Effects of Vindication

Instead of consulting people that played no part in catering for the needs of the vindicated, even at the cost of consigning them to early graves, we call for meaningful research that will boost our understanding of a shamefully neglected group of victims of miscarriages of justice.
The psychological effects of vindication remain a mystery. The vindicated are no more innocent now than they always were. The difference is that now they are believed by all but those who refuse to see. But what about the effects on vindication? Has the very thing they craved actually damaged them?
For many years they suffered whispering campaigns, including among so-called friends and developed paranoid reactions to their own communities, wondering who believed them and who didnʼt. Friendships and other relationships broke down under the strain of the certainty they now have against their knowledge that they should have been believed and supported to the hilt earlier.

Justice Betrayed

Feeling hurt – betrayed even – by people they trusted, but whose support was not strong enough, the vindicated may need extra support, or at least understanding. That requires research and it must include the psychological effects of tariff abuse.
Some vindicated people have seen the truly guilty receive more lenient tariffs than they did. How can this be justified and what effect does it have on the mental well-being of the vindicated? There is not so much a dearth of research on this – it is virtually non-existent.
Tariff Reform and after-care, especially in relation to the vindicated, are the flagship projects of The Fitted-In Project. They even involve sport as a means to aid their recovery.
We believe that research is essential on both topics and we are conducting it, but there are areas that we cannot cover as efficiently as we would like, so we call on the Clinical Forensic and Legal Medicine Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, other organisations and individuals to join us in facilitating understanding of the psychological effects of vindication in terms of after-care needs and also tariff abuse through research. We hope that its members will research these issues, or facilitate research projects with us on these issues.
It is through knowledge that their needs can be addressed, but first they need to be understood – that is a task to be led by professionals in the field through rigorous research. It is in our opinion an essential tenet of another integrated approach – one that integrates the vindicated back into society and the life they should have had.

[1] An indication of the importance of an integrated approach can be seen in Equality of Arms, at http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=690  for more on this case and others too.

[2]  Subsequently, a sixth who plainly was eligible has died, so it is too late for him too.

[3]  The current government has extended the attack on compensation to demand a standard that appears to demand that the wrongfully convicted must be exonerated – a standard that can prove impossible to meet unless the real perpetrator is brought to justice. Few independent observers believe that Barry George had anything to do with the murder of former gymnast and later television presenter, Jill Dando, but he has been denied compensation on the grounds of exoneration. This is grossly unfair as the criminal justice system rarely makes findings of innocence. A not guilty verdict includes both the innocent and also defendants who have not been proved guilty. The distinction is moot. Similarly convictions are quashed on appeal because they are unsafe. That includes both the innocent and appellants whose convictions were faulty. Again the distinction is moot as neither the trial nor appeal gives a finding of innocence, so how does a wrongfully accused prove that they have been exonerated and are therefore entitled to compensation?

[4] Please note that this was in 2011.

[5] That was correct when this presentation was given to a conference of medical practitioners, which included distinguished forensic pathologists.

[6]    See how we exposed this scandal in A Lack of Care at http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=709 and Who Cared? at http://fittedin.org/fittedin/?p=707

Bluff

Yusef Abdullahi had a strong alibi. It was treated not as a possible indicator of innocence, but as a guide to what the prosecution had to be undermine. It was, in short, seen as nothing more than an inconvenience. Disclosure obligations were even used to bluff the defence into not calling a witness the CPS and Crown must have known supported Abdullahi’s innocence.

And Tony Paris too had an alibi that common sense verified and the sole corroboration against him was a prison informer whose story stretched credibility to absurd lengths. Ian Massey had been looking for a deal a month earlier. He didn’t care who would have to pay for his ticket to a reduced sentence. Massey was Massey, trying his luck as he had before.

He tried claiming that he had information on a notorious double murder in Wales before Paris had even been arrested, but this information was kept from Paris’ lawyers. Dyfed-Powys Police were not so easily impressed with Massey. They rejected Massey’s overtures on that case – it was eventually solved with the jailing for life of John Cooper, who also committed another double murder in that jurisdiction four years later.

Incredible Evidence

There never was credible evidence to justify the arrests of the Cardiff Five and the more the police and Crown tried to shore up the case the more leaks sprung. Rather than review the case they had as the CPS was bound to do, only evidence assisting the prosecution was processed. Inconvenient evidence was marginalised at best.

Instead of being thrown out as it should have been, a palpably unreliable case resulted in convictions that disgrace every reasonable concept of justice, but it would be a mistake to blame just the police or defence lawyers for such an appalling prosecution.

There is plenty of blame to go round and shamefully only one institution has held its hands up and accepted responsibility for its role in this travesty of justice – South Wales Police.

Hindrance

Stephen Miller’s solicitor when arrested for the murder of Lynette White, Graham Dobson used a local solicitor Geraint Richards to represent Miller in the interviews. His presence was a hindrance as legally Miller had been represented. Richards failed to intervene while Miller was interviewed in a manner that breached the protections of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE).

Miller was represented ably at the first trial by Anthony Evans QC, who presented the same arguments on oppression that Michael Mansfield QC argued successfully on appeal in December 1992. Evans found Mr Justice McNeill, who died before the first trial ended, in intransigent mood.

Intransigence

Had McNeill ruled as he should have done this case would have been thrown out in 1989. Instead it continued without criticism of McNeill being made by the appeal judges. Why? Judges must understand the law regarding oppression. McNeill’s decision on the admissibility of Miller’s confession was quite simply wrong.

The Court of Appeal, headed by then Lord Chief Justice Lord Taylor, was horrified by the same interviews that McNeill found admissible. He had heard the worst bullying and concluded that it was acceptable. He was wrong and so was the Court of Appeal in failing to highlight his flawed judgement on that issue – one that contributed to making this miscarriage of justice all but inevitable.

Wretched Luck

Evans was unavailable for the second trial. That almost concluded Miller’s wretched luck. Roger Frisby QC failed to argue that Miller had been oppressed in a case that is now one of the standard texts on oppression in a police station. The ‘confession’ was in. Leonard could have used his discretion under Section 78 of PACE to exclude it, but the exercise of that discretion is rare and Leonard didn’t apply it.

The jury heard the confession, but were deprived of the context and understanding of what could induce an innocent man to sign away his future for the shortest of gains and the most paltry reward – an end to the interviewing. His confession, which he retracted had the terrible consequence of convicting his co-defendants Yusef Abdullahi and Tony Paris, despite compelling evidence of innocence.

Inadequate

But there was more. Miller’s lawyers missed the significance of evidence that all but proved him innocent and was available for his trial. Languishing in the unused material was statements by Debbie Actie and Robyn Reed. The young women had seen Miller playing pool shortly after the Crown say Lynette was murdered. Those claims were never retracted.

There were trainer-prints, hairs, finger-prints, fibres and plenty of blood-staining – both that of the killer and of course Lynette’s. This meant that if Miller was guilty he would have had to have removed all traces of the scientific evidence that tied him to the flat and victim without showing any attempt to interfere with it.

He would then have had to clean himself and his clothes so thoroughly that not a speck of blood remained, but without interfering with the dirt on the white parts of his stone-washed jeans. He then had to go across the road to a nightclub and play pool without a change in general demeanour. He had to achieve all this within 20 minutes of the murder and as his lawyers knew with the IQ of an eleven-year-old child.

The prosecution case against Miller should have been laughed out of court – literally – but it was never contradicted as vigorously as it should have been. The poor performance of Miller’s solicitors and Roger Frisby QC have never been investigated, let alone censured.

The Suspension of Disbelief

There is no longer any credible doubt that the Cardiff Five¹ are innocent, but they always were. It should not have required the conviction of the real murderer of Lynette White to convince anyone. Any objective review of the evidence should have led inexorably to that conclusion. As with other miscarriage of justice cases the evidence and common sense ought to have prevented not only wrongful convictions, but the wrongful arrests too.

The murder of Lynette White is a tawdry tale of a vicious killing that involved excessive brutality – far beyond what was needed to kill – and the investigation and trials that followed of justice betrayed. It is now established as one of the most notorious and easily preventable miscarriages of justice in British history.

An extraordinary tale began in the early hours of Valentine’s Day 1988 with what was then the most brutal murder of its type in Welsh history – over 50 stab wounds – with obvious sexual overtones to it. After ten months the original inquiry revealed a closed mind that focused on obviously innocent men.

Forensic science proved the police’s scenario that five men and at least two alleged eyewitnesses were in that room along with the victim was quite frankly ludicrous. This became an egregious miscarriage of justice, but it ought to have been impossible. The quality of the evidence gathered against the five men who eventually stood trial was woeful to put it mildly.

It was a case that required an extraordinary suspension of disbelief from several professionals, especially lawyers who should have known better, but there is nothing in that story that does not occur routinely in other cases. It is the combination of what has gone wrong that is incredible. Equally unbelievable is the failure of the criminal justice system to halt a plainly inappropriate prosecution in its tracks and hold those who failed the public accountable.

Bullied and Hectored

It is well known that Stephen Miller was ‘bullied and hectored’ by police in interviews that breached his rights shamefully. Miller was shouted down until he accepted the police’s version of Lynette’s murder – a scientifically ludicrous scenario that produced an utterly false confession.

Miller was an extremely vulnerable person. He was highly suggestible and of below average intelligence. He was very susceptible to bullying and held to an absurd standard by David Elfer QC – a standard that required accepting everything put to him to meet Elfer’s definition of suggestibility.

Dr Gisli Gudjonsson, the acknowledged leader in his field, understood the extent of Miller’s vulnerability to making a false confession. Sadly Elfer did not and, even more worryingly, nor did Miller’s defence lawyers for his trial and retrial. Their failures contributed in no small measure to an awful miscarriage of justice.

Absurd

The victims of crime (or their family) have the right to give statements about the impact the crime has had upon them to the judge before he or she decides how long the guilty party must serve and rightly so. However, nowhere in the debate on victims’ rights is there any mention of the effects of the rights of victims of miscarriages of justice who have been vindicated, even though there should be no doubt that they have been victimised too.

Despite vindication – a miscarriage of justice that has been resolved by the conviction of the truly guilty – real perpetrators have been treated more leniently than the entirely innocent ones they allowed to be wrongly accused or convicted. That is shameful, especially as it was entirely preventable.

Horrific

The power to set tariffs (the minimum time that must be served of a life sentence) was taken away from the Home Secretary before the first case of vindication in a murder case in the DNA age in Britain, which occurred in July 2003 when Jeffrey Gafoor pleaded guilty to the murder of Lynette White. She was the victim of what was then (Valentine’s Day 1988) the most brutal murder of its type in Welsh history.

Her murder involved over fifty stab wounds, some of which were inflicted as she was dying or after death. Yusef Abdullahi, Steve Miller, Tony Paris and the cousins John and Ronnie Actie were charged with her murder and the Actie cousins were acquitted in November 1990, while the Cardiff Three were jailed for life. The wrongful convictions were quashed two years later, but not before the Cardiff Five had served a total of sixteen years actual prison time for a crime that they did not commit.

Unconscionable

Within a year of the publication of my book Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry in 1998, the case was re-opened and a combination of excellent police work and investigations by forensic scientists resulted in the arrest and conviction of Gafoor. He gave no comment interviews before admitting his guilt at his first appearance for pleas.

However the case against him was compelling as there was no answer to the DNA evidence, which could not have been planted for reasons that have been explained in The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt¹. Nevertheless, the law orders judges to credit defendants for ‘swift’ guilty pleas when setting tariffs. But did that apply in this case?

It was an horrific crime and Gafoor had allowed men he knew to be innocent to serve several years of actual imprisonment for his crime, but it was not entirely Mr Justice Royce’s fault that the tariff seemed unduly lenient. However, it remains obscene that there is a real possibility that the truly guilty Gafoor could serve less time in prison for a crime that he committed than the innocent men that he allowed to suffer wrongful imprisonment for the same crime. There can be no excuse for that.

Remorseless

Gafoor can show ‘genuine’ remorse for his crime, because he has reason to be sorry for murdering White, but the Cardiff Three could not without lying about their guilt – a lie that would have prevented her murder from ever being correctly resolved. Given the nature of the crime that they were convicted of they would have been deemed to be ‘in denial of murder’ if they failed to admit their guilt as well.

They would also have been required to take courses to address their offending behaviour, even though they were actually innocent. Gafoor can easily do all of this and progress through the system because he is guilty. Ironically, the system caters for the needs of the guilty and rewards them, but punishes the innocent.

The Cardiff Three could have been crushed by their experience of wrongful imprisonment, or worse still committed suicide in prison, while Gafoor savoured his ill-deserved freedom – none of which was taken into account when setting the tariff.

The criminal justice system claims to put victims at its centre of the system, so why have the Cardiff Five been denied the status they deserve as victims of Gafoor, the criminal justice system and perjury too?

Impact

The law allows the families of victims the right to give victim statements about how the murder of their loved one has affected them to judges before the tariff – the minimum that must be served before an offender is eligible to apply for release on parole – is set. This gives victims a say, but what about other victims?

Lynette White’s family did so before Mr Justice Royce imposed the tariff on Jeffrey Gafoor. Royce referred to them in his explanation of the tariff and described them as powerful, but Lynetteʼs family were not the only victims of Jeffrey Gafoorʼs hideous crimes. Despite being adversely affected by Gafoorʼs crimes for the rest of their lives the criminal justice system and criminal actions during the investigation, the Cardiff Five (Yusef Abullahi, John and Ronnie Actie, Stephen Miller and Tony Paris) were given no input at all.

Surely they deserved that small courtesy that could have assisted in understanding the full effect of Gafoor’s crimes, especially as it is not even a criminal offence to knowingly allow innocent people to suffer wrongful imprisonment for his crime, but shouldn’t it be?

Support?

More than five years after they were proved innocent beyond any doubt they will probably never recover from their ordeal. Depriving them of the opportunity to detail how they too were victimised by Gafoor’s actions adds to it by denying the fact that they suffered greatly at his hands too.

Allowing them to give victim statements demonstrates in practice that they have indeed been victimised by his actions and shows that the criminal justice system takes its responsibilities seriously. It is an area that has shamefully neglected until now. There have been other vindication cases since the Cardiff Five made history and there will be more to come.

In this case it has already been proved that they were the victims of crime as well, as perjured testimony contributed to their wrongful convictions, but where is the support for them? As victims of crime are they not entitled to the assistance provided to others by organisations such as Victim Support? And if not, why not?

To date they have never received any and were not referred to Victim Support by the police. Nor did Victim Support make any effort to contact them despite the high profile nature of this case. They are clearly victims as well and should be treated as such, so the criminal justice system should acknowledge this and allow the victims of such miscarriages of justice the right to be heard and receive whatever.

Vindication

The law can be amended easily to allow vindicated victims like the Cardiff Five to give victim statements as well. It is surely not too much to ask that they be given the same courtesy that is afforded to the family of the victim of the murder. Other miscarriages of justice have been resolved in this manner now.

However, tariffs or sentences have been imposed without acknowledging the status of those who suffered the miscarriage of justice as victims deserving the right to voice their concerns. It was already too late for Stefan Kiszko who died without seeing Ronald Castree convicted of the murder of Lesley Molseed, but not for others.

Colin Stagg and the original defendants in the Damilola Taylor Inquiry were and alive when Robert Napper was brought to account for the killing of Rachel Nickell and the four boys who originally stood trial for the murder of Damilola Taylor when the Preddie brothers (Ricky and Danny) were finally brought to justice. There will be others.

The Right to be Heard

It is difficult to imagine a more disgraceful way to treat all of the victims of such cases and it is inevitable that there will be others that are resolved in this manner in the future. Without all the victims of these cases being given a voice further injustice will occur. The families of the victims of homicides have their say when tariffs are considered, but the victims of these miscarriages of justice are excluded by the system that has wronged them.

Why should the victims of such miscarriages of justice be denied the right to make victim statements? If victims are to be truly put at the heart of the criminal justice system then all the victims of cases such as this must be given a voice. It cannot roll back the years or spare them the ordeal that they have suffered, but acknowledging that they too are victims would be a start – albeit a small step, but long overdue.