UK:Miscarriages of justice
01 September 1991
On 26 June, the Appeal Court decided that the convictions of the Maguire Seven, including Guiseppe Conlon who died in prison in 1980, were unsafe and unsatisfactory. But the judgement was regarded as far from satisfactory by the Maguire family and their supporters. The decision to quash the 1976 convictions was on only one of the six grounds heard by the Court, namely that "the possibility of innocent contamination (with nitroglycerine) cannot be excluded." The judges therefore accepted the original forensic evidence even though it was the interim findings of the May inquiry into the Guildford and Maguire cases which strongly criticised the forensic scientists involved and which finally forced the Maguire case back to the Appeal Court. In an entirely hypothetical example used as the basis for the Court's judgement, Lord Justice Stuart-Smith suggested that all seven appellants may have used the same bathroom towel, which may have been contaminated with nitroglycerine. No evidence of explosives was found anywhere in the house even though it was dubbed "Aunt Annie's Bomb Factory" by the press.
At the end of June, Gareth Pierce acting for Judith Ward submitted material to the Home Office questioning the forensic evidence in the 1974 case. Ward was given twelve life sentences plus thirty years for planting a bomb on an army coach which exploded on the M62 killing nine soldiers, a soldier's wife and her two sons. She is one of the longest serving women prisoners in Britain and has never appealed against her conviction despite maintaining her innocence.
Judith Ward was convicted on the basis of forensic and confession evidence, even though at the time the coach bomb was planted she was 100 miles away. Dr. Frank Skuse, the discredited Home Office forensic scientist involved in the Birmingham Six case, claimed to find traces of explosives on both of Ward's hands using the widely-criticised Griess test. As Michael Farrell points out, when the more sensitive Thin Layer Chromatography test was carried out, Skuse's results were not confirmed. This time only faint traces were reported on one of Ward's hands. The weakness of the forensic data was clearly acknowledged during the West Midlands police interrogation of one of the Birmingham Six, Paddy Hill, when he was told, "you've got more 'jelly' on you than Judith Ward." It is now accepted that Hill had never touched or handled gelignite.
Law Courts Ireland