This account of the Clydach murders and the injustices it exposes has been an incredible and a complex story to tell. It is not just another run-of-the-mill miscarriage of justice where all that might be demonstrated is that some cog in the machinery of justice was out of place. In this case, the entire machine broke down, and multiple injustices combined to commit one of the worst miscarriages of justice Britain has ever seen.
This case is one that falls into that unusual category where not only does the convicted person maintain his innocence, but, exceptionally, he points to another person as the likely perpetrator of the crime. It was never my intention to produce evidence to show that somebody other than Dai Morris might have been responsible for the Clydach murders: that is the job of the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. It was my objective solely to consider the investigation of the South Wales Police in its entirety and to consider the evidence presented at the trials in order to ascertain, as far as was possible, that Dai Morris was treated fairly and was not deprived of his human rights.
This objective turned out to be impossible, however, because Dai Morris and the Lewises, former suspects for the crime, are inextricably linked in this terrible, tragic saga. I could not, in all good conscience, examine carefully the case leading to the imprisonment for life of a man who may well be innocent, while at the same time overlooking evidence which showed that someone else might have been responsible for the crimes.
When I began my research into the Clydach murders, I had no preconceived notions about the identity of the killer. There was a great divergence of opinion on this point by an unusually large number of intelligent people. But, perhaps, like many in Britain’s mostly law-abiding community, I had faith in the country’s legal system and I secretly felt that because Dai Morris was convicted on two occasions of the crimes, he must be guilty of the murders, and justice had been served. So it was primarily to satisfy my own curiosity, as well as that of my friends, that I set out to examine the case more closely in order to discover the truth for myself.
I thoroughly expected to quickly find incontrovertible evidence supporting the jury’s guilty verdicts, proving beyond reasonable doubt that Dai Morris was the killer. But what I discovered was nothing of the sort. Instead, my research revealed a police force willing not only to arrest an innocent man, but to charge him with murder on the basis of his criminal record, and very little else. For me it was unthinkable that three police officers, sworn to uphold the law, could possibly have been in any way involved in the murders.
But taking the history of wrongful convictions in the United Kingdom as my starting point, any illusions I held about the integrity of the police were very quickly shattered. I discovered that a number of police forces were literally a law unto themselves, although institutionalised corruption involving South Wales Police gave that police force the unenviable record of being the worst of them all. It seemed to me that the police were more concerned with achieving convictions, and lowering the crime rate, than they were with ensuring that they had the right person for the offence. I was shocked and unsettled by this unnerving discovery.
Whether this systematic corruption applied to Dai Morris’ case remained to be seen. He had, after all, been convicted of the crime not once, but twice. I asked myself: how could the justice system, which I had devoted my entire career as a solicitor to supporting, drop the ball on two separate occasions? In my view, the odds were infinitesimally small.
The first Crown Court trial of Dai Morris, held in Swansea in 2002, was indeed unfair. Surprisingly, given the catalogue of corrupt behaviour on the part of South Wales Police, it was not, on this occasion, all due to wrongdoing on their part. At that point it was still possible for a good defence team to show that the evidence the police had gathered was thin, and not enough to convict him. It was an unfair trial because a member of Dai Morris’ own defence team, solicitor David Hutchinson, represented Morris in circumstances where he should not have done so. Hutchinson acted for the Lewis twins at the same time as Morris, and he had developed a relationship with them that went far beyond the usual solicitor-client relationship. As a consequence, Hutchinson failed to act in Morris’ best interests and did not represent him either properly or professionally.
The retrial held four years later at Newport Crown Court offered a chance to remedy the injustice. This time, entirely different but perhaps related factors led to his conviction. But the shadow of the quashed conviction hung over the Newport Crown Court trial, in which the jury members knew that Morris had already been convicted of the murders. In addition to their inevitable prejudice, South Wales Police produced witnesses who gave vital if dubious evidence to the court which the defence chose not to challenge. Given the nature of the evidence with which the jury was presented, it was not hard to convict him again.
While a righteous justice system can mitigate the effects of a corrupt police force, it cannot defeat the combined force of the police and an establishment that is determined to convict. The British justice system is vulnerable to the integrity of its people. It took two trials to derail justice and irrevocably change the path of Dai Morris’ life.
Who the Clydach murderer really was, what the motive might have been, and if anyone else might also have been involved may, some day, once again become a matter for the police. How South Wales Police conducted its protracted and flawed investigation into the Clydach murders should be a matter for further inquiry by its regulators. What is certain, and what my research for this book has astonished me by revealing, is that Dai Morris’ retrial was also unfair, and yet another miscarriage of justice has taken place.