Now! Then! After 19 years in prison, Anthony Steel’s conviction for the 1977 Bradford murder of Carol Wilkinson is quashed due to failings by West Yorkshire Police

Excerpt

Although the evidence of the appellant’s abnormally low IQ could have been established at trial, it is the combination of his borderline abnormality in terms of suggestibility and compliance and of his unforeseen abnormally low IQ which rendered him particularly vulnerable to interrogation; and this would be so irrespective of the appellant’s allegations concerning violence and the threats of violence, inducements, and the refusal of access to a solicitor. It is not possible to regard the conviction as safe when the essential issue, indeed the sole issue on which the jury were asked to judge the appellant’s case was whether his confession was voluntary and true or not.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.
Abbreviations:

ER: East Riding
GM: Greater Manchester
NR: North Riding
NY: North Yorkshire
SY: South Yorkshire
WR: West Riding
WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Times piece on the day after. The full decision wasn’t issued till June. Neil Wilby in 2013. Steel died soon afterwards, and the battle to get hold of his compensation between his family, his girlfriend and Peter Hill, the Rough Justice producer, is also gruesome. See also the BBC report. Are the Olive Tunstall reports public domain?

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Original

Discussion.

Mr Mansfield’s primary submission was that the new evidence made the appellant’s conviction unsafe, and that was irrespective of any breach of the Judges’ Rules or of the absence of any modern safeguards thought necessary for the protection of a suspect and the avoidance of a miscarriage of justice. His alternative submission was that the conviction was in any event unsafe once such breaches or the absence of such safeguards were taken into consideration.
In support of his primary submission, Mr Mansfield emphasised that the new evidence showed that the appellant, unknown to the jury or any other participant at his trial, was a far more vulnerable person in the context of his interviews than had been or could have been appreciated at the time and that, in a case which depended essentially on his confession, his conviction must therefore be regarded as unsafe. For the Crown, Mr Kelsey-Fry felt unable to proffer an argument to the contrary.
We agree. Although, as in King, the evidence of the appellant’s abnormally low IQ could have been established at trial, it is the combination of his borderline abnormality in terms of suggestibility and compliance and of his unforeseen abnormally low IQ which rendered him particularly vulnerable to interrogation; and this would be so irrespective of the appellant’s allegations concerning violence and the threats of violence, inducements, and the refusal of access to a solicitor. It is not possible to regard the conviction as safe when the essential issue, indeed the sole issue on which the jury were asked to judge the appellant’s case was whether his confession was voluntary and true or not. In so judging him, the jury would have to rely on the appellant’s own evidence from the witness box without the advantage of the new expert evidence as to his vulnerability when alone in the police station during lengthy interviews. If in those circumstances the jury might have found it difficult to believe how the appellant could confess to a crime he did not commit, they would not have found it any easier to accept, or to be rendered doubtful about, his more specific allegations as to how he was treated during his interrogation. If, however, they had had the advantage of hearing the new evidence, it cannot be postulated that they would not have looked at the whole of the appellant’s evidence in a new light.
The judge, whose summing up was a model of fairness, was at a similar disadvantage. So were counsel at trial. Without appreciating how potentially vulnerable the appellant was, any of them was entitled to present the conflict of evidence between the police witnesses and the appellant in stark terms, reflected in the judge’s summing up, between on the one side an entirely straightforward interview process and on the other side a sinister conspiracy. Presented, however, with the new evidence, it becomes apparent that a third alternative becomes possible, which is that, without any abuse of the process, a highly vulnerable suspect was not recognised for what he was.
It is precisely because of the dangers of such vulnerability that certain safeguards have been built into the process. Of course, it has never been permissible to use violence, threats or inducements to extract a confession. In other respects, however, the rules have changed to reflect an increasing appreciation of what is necessary for safeguards against the risk of a miscarriage of justice. At the time of the interviews and trial in this case, the test for the admissibility and relevance of a confession was that it was voluntary, defined in note (e) to the Judges’ Rules as not being obtained “by fear of prejudice or hope of advantage…or by oppression”, see R v. Prager (1972) 56 Cr App R 151. Nowadays a new test found in section 76(2)(b) of PACE is that of reliability. As the note in Archbold, 2003, at para 15-268 points out, a confession might be inadmissible under section 76(2)(b) without any impropriety. At the time of the interviews in this case, under paragraph (c) to the preamble to Judges’ Rules “every person at any stage of an investigation should be able to communicate and to consult privately with a solicitor”: at that time, however, it appears to have been the view that there would be no breach unless the suspect had requested the services of a solicitor, and even in case of breach it would seem that there was uncertainty as to its importance: see Archbold, 40^th ed, 1979, at para 1390. Nowadays, however, the right of access to legal advice and to being apprised of that right is dealt with in detail in PACE and its Codes and its importance underlined (R v. Samuel [1988] QB 615 at 630). Whether the appellant had in fact asked for a solicitor was of course a point in issue in this case: but it is not something on which the new evidence bears; and it is not possible to say that there had been a breach of paragraph (c), although Mr Mansfield urged us to infer that there had, for instance from the speed with which Mr Taylor appeared once the interrogation had been concluded with the sixth interview.
In this connection, however, the fact that the appellant was what used to be called mentally retarded or mentally handicapped is of particular importance. Its importance was recognised under the Judges’ Rules, for Rule 4A read (see para 1391a of the 1979 Archbold):

“If it appears to a police officer that a person (whether a witness or a suspect) whom he intends to interview has a mental handicap which raises a doubt as to whether the person can understand the questions put to him, or which makes the person likely to be especially open to suggestion, the officer should take particular care in putting questions and accepting the reliability of answers. As far as practicable, and where recognised as such by the police, a mentally handicapped adult (whether suspected of crime or not) should be interviewed only in the presence of a parent or other person in whose care, custody or control he is, or of some person who is not a police officer (for example a social worker).”
Nowadays, there is a straightforward prohibition in the Codes on the interview of a mentally handicapped person in the absence of an appropriate adult, which goes beyond the qualified language of Rule 4A (“If it appears to a police officer…where recognised as such by the police”), and in addition section 77 of PACE requires the judge to warn the jury of a special need for caution before convicting an accused in reliance on his confession where the case against him depends wholly or substantially on that confession and the court is satisfied that he is mentally handicapped and the confession was not made in the presence of an independent person.
On behalf of the Crown, Mr Kelsey-Fry was himself inclined to concede, indeed to volunteer, that an inference could be drawn that in this case the police had realised that the appellant was not a normal suspect, but was vulnerable, and that this inference was to be drawn from the circumstances of DCS Hobson’s desire for the sixth interview following the statement. In the judge’s summing up, this interview was spoken of as prompted by the superintendent’s caution about a confession being made 18 months after the murder when (subject to the key ring) there was nothing to connect the suspect with the crime. In the application to this court in 1981, however, Lord Lane spoke, as has been noted above (at para 52), in terms which suggest that there was also concern on the superintendent’s part about the vulnerability of the appellant. On this basis, a significant breach of the Judges’ Rules could be shown, if that were necessary, and one that related to the new evidence.
In our judgment, however, the need to show a breach of the rules then in force, although a factor in King and no doubt not one to be disregarded, was not a condition precedent to the success of that appeal, nor to the success of this. Rather, the background of the rules then in force and, as Lord Bingham put it, of “circumstances which denied the defendant important safeguards later thought necessary to avoid the risk of a miscarriage of justice” is what gives to the new evidence its power to affect the safety of the conviction in question. It is because of concern for the vulnerability of the mentally handicapped, underlined in more modern provisions but already well demonstrated in Rule 4A, that the new evidence links directly to the safety of the appellant’s conviction.

1507 words.

Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

28 February 2003: After 19 years in prison, Anthony Steel’s conviction for the 1977 Bradford murder of Carol Wilkinson is quashed due to failings by West Yorkshire Police

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