This is a list of miscarriage of justice cases from 1985 involving South Wales Police. It includes cases where a convicted individual was later cleared of the crime and has received either an official exoneration, or there is a consensus that he or she was unjustly punished, or where a conviction has been quashed and no retrial has taken place, so that the accused is assumed to be innocent.
Paul and Wayne Darvell, 1985
On Friday, 14 June 1985, the battered body of Sandra Phillips was discovered on the floor of the sex shop she managed in Swansea. She was the mother of four children, one of whom, Grace, had celebrated her fourteenth birthday on that day.
A year later, on 19 June 1986, two homeless brothers, Wayne Darvell, 30, and Paul Darvell, 31, both of low intelligence, were convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that Paul serve at least 20 years and Wayne 15 years.
Five years later, in March 1991, the BBC programme Rough Justice cast doubt on the evidence-gathering methods employed by the police in the case. This led to an inquiry involving the Devon and Cornwall police force which uncovered an appalling catalogue of unethical and illegal practices carried out by the South Wales Police detectives involved in the murder investigation.
They discovered that Wayne Darvell had been bullied into making a statement implicating both himself and his brother in the crime, a statement that the detectives knew was untrue. Electro Static Detection Apparatus testing of detectives’ notebooks showed that their notes had been compiled at much later dates than the detectives had claimed and, in one case, a detective who claimed that he had written his notes immediately after an interview produced as evidence a notebook that was not actually issued until two months later.
Exculpatory evidence, including a bloody palm print which did not match either of the brothers’ palms and would therefore have cleared them, was suppressed by the prosecution and kept hidden from defence lawyers. Photographs and negatives of the palm print, which would have proved the Darvell brothers’ innocence, were destroyed.
Secretly taped conversations of the brothers’ discussions in their cell, strongly suggesting their innocence, were not given to defence lawyers and they later disappeared. Two detectives who claimed to have seen the Darvell brothers near the murder scene were proved to have been lying when the detectives’ diaries were examined and showed that they were working elsewhere at the time. An earring, said to belong to the murder victim, was planted in the back of a police car used to transport one of the brothers to the police station.
In 1992, the Court of Appeal in London quashed their convictions and the two brothers walked free. That evening Robert Lawrence, Chief Constable of South Wales Police, said he ‘deeply regretted’ the miscarriage of justice and vowed that he would reopen the murder investigation.
Three South Wales Police detectives involved in the murder investigation were charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and were committed for trial at Chester Crown Court. It was alleged that they had forged notes and had given false evidence which led directly to the Darvell brothers’ conviction and subsequent imprisonment.
Following an eleven-day trial, during which their defence counsel claimed that their actions had been ‘sloppy’ rather than criminal, all three officers were found not guilty.
At the time of writing, more than twenty years after Chief Constable Robert Lawrence’s momentous but ultimately empty statement that he would reopen the case, no one has been charged with Sandra Phillips’ murder and the trail has gone cold. Grace, just a child of fourteen on the day of her mother’s death, is now 46 years old. The identity of her mother’s brutal killer still remains unknown.*
Darren Hall, Michael O’Brien and Ellis Sherwood, 1987
Following the killing of Cardiff newsagent Philip Saunders in his shop in 1987, three petty criminals, Darren Hall, aged 18, Michael O’Brien, aged 33, and Ellis Sherwood, aged 30, were arrested and charged with his murder. The prosecution case rested entirely on Darren Hall’s ‘confession’ that he was ‘the lookout for a robbery that went wrong’. Despite the lack of solid evidence linking any of the three men to the crime, they were all found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
When the case was reviewed by the Thames Valley Police, their report was scathing of South Wales Police detectives’ investigative methods, and it subsequently formed the basis of an appeal. Thames Valley Police uncovered numerous irregularities, flagrant breaches of police protocol and unacceptable investigative practices. In one case, a detective had handcuffed eighteen-year-old Darren Hall to a hot radiator in order to force a confession from him, and he had been denied access to a solicitor for several days. Hall and his associates also disappeared from the station’s custody records for hours at a time when they were being subjected to abusive off-the-record interrogations. Incredibly, detectives offered Michael O’Brien £10,000 to perjure himself by testifying falsely against South Wales Police’s prime suspect, Darren Hall. The Criminal Cases Review Body said that South Wales Police had shown a ‘systematic disregard of proper procedure’. By the time their cases were quashed by the Court of Appeal in 1999, and they were released from custody, these three innocent young men had spent eleven years in prison.
Stephen Miller, Anthony Paris and Yusef Abdullahi, 1988
Having been wrongfully convicted of the murder of Cardiff prostitute Lynette White in 1988, and sentenced to life imprisonment, Stephen Miller, Anthony Paris and Yusef Abdullahi were released from prison by the Court of Appeal in 1992.
An investigation by the BBC Panorama programme, which led to the appeal, discovered numerous irregularities in the handling of the case by South Wales Police. There was no direct evidence against any of the suspects: no DNA, fingerprints, a weapon or even a motive. Stephen Miller endured nineteen interviews, during which he was shouted at, threatened and bullied. It was only under the most intense pressure that he broke down and confessed to the crime, also implicating his co-defendants. Before this point, he had denied involvement 307 times.
After the release of the three men, the case was reopened. In 2002, after the development of Second Generation Multiplex Plus, forensic scientists obtained a reliable crime scene DNA profile. In 2003 the profile enabled the police to identify the real killer, a security guard and client of the deceased, who confessed to White’s murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Eight police officers involved in the original investigation were charged with perverting the course of justice. In addition, some of them were charged with perjury. Two civilian witnesses who had lied under oath were also charged. But before the trial began, a box of vital evidence in police custody of Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Coutts went missing. This left the court with no choice but to acquit the defendants. Less than two months later the missing documents turned up in the office of DCS Coutts.
Jonathan Jones, 1993
In 1993, Jonathan Jones was convicted of the murder of Harry and Megan Tooze, his girlfriend Cheryl’s elderly parents, by blasting them to death with a shotgun. Despite being elsewhere at the time, and despite having no motive, Jones was found guilty of the crimes on the basis that his thumbprint was found on a saucer, part of a set owned by the couple, and the staggering, unfounded theory put forward by the police that he wanted to get his hands on the money his girlfriend stood to inherit.
In 1996, Jones was freed by the Court of Appeal when it was established that money could not have been a motive because he and Cheryl Jones earned a sizeable income, she had £6,000 in savings, Jones’ alibi had never been disproved, and the glasses that he always wore revealed no trace of the victims’ blood or brain tissue. It was a case ‘based on suspicion, speculation and conjecture’, yet it cost Jonathan Jones almost three years of his life.
Annette Hewins and Donna Clarke, 1995
Annette Hewins and Donna Clarke were convicted of causing the death of three people in Merthyr Tydfil by arson, even though there was no forensic evidence against them, no fingerprints and no independent witnesses to the crime. The two women were sentenced to 13 years and 21 years imprisonment respectively.
In the investigation that followed, it was shown that during 30 hours of questioning, South Wales Police detectives had bullied Clarke, an immature and vulnerable teenager, into making a false statement, thereby implicating her friends in the crime. She admitted lying under oath, but said she did so only because detectives had frightened her into signing the statement.
CCTV footage recorded at the garage where the petrol was bought showed that the petrol Hewins purchased was leaded. However, the fire was started with unleaded petrol. The police knew this was a serious flaw in their case but they chose to ignore it. Crucially, they failed to pass on this evidence to the defence lawyers.
After their release from prison, Annette Hewins said: ‘They [South Wales Police detectives] targeted one person and built a case around them. They convinced themselves that someone is guilty and ignored any evidence that pointed to other perpetrators. Yet, innocent people, and the victims’ families, have had their lives ruined.’
Notes
* After the Devon and Cornwall Police inquiry commenced, I found myself in Exeter police station representing a male suspect for the murder. By this time the photographic negatives of the bloody palm print, which might have provided a match, had disappeared and no other evidence linked my client to the crime. No admissions were made during the interview, though the answers he gave were very odd. Later the same day he was released without charge. But as we were being led out of the police station, the sergeant accompanying us said to my client: ‘Don’t you feel bad that two men were sent to prison because of what you did?’ After deliberating for a moment, and perhaps realising that he was no longer under caution, he casually nodded and replied ‘Yeah’. He then exited the building and returned to Swansea. He was never reinterviewed in connection with the murder.