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Black youth cleared

01 July 2003

Ivan Fergus, a thirteen-year old schoolboy, from Peckham, south London, who had been sentenced to 15 months youth custody for assault with intent to rob, has been cleared by the Court of Appeal. Ivan, who had served six months in detention, was released on bail last July pending his appeal, following a campaign by his family and friends (See Statewatch 2:4).

The only evidence against Ivan was based on a highly questionable and uncorroborated identification of him by the victim, over a month after the assault. In fact Ivan bore very little resemblance to the youth described; he also had a caste- iron alibi for the period in question.

The three Appeal court judges censured Ivan's solicitors, Topping and Co, for flagrant disregard of their duty towards him. The firm have been suspended from practising over a separate incident. They also criticised the trial judge, Peter Rowntree, for his failure to withdraw the case and a seriously flawed summing-up. Lewisham police, they said, were guilty of a lamentable failure to investigate the case; they had refused to investigate seven separate requests from the Crown Prosecution Service to take statements from the alibi witness.

After the appeal Nellie Fergus, Ivan's mother, said: "The terrifying thing is that if I had just left it and not made a fuss, he would have been criminalised for the rest of his life". She added that the family would seek compensation for the wrongful conviction.

The case was only one of over a hundred miscarriages of justice taken up by Liberty, the National Association of Probation Officers and the campaigning group Conviction in a report presented to the Home Office last year.

Independent 22.6.93, 29.6.93; Guardian 22.6.93.