Guest speakers – Keith Hyatt and Michael O’Brien:
Rachel Manning was murdered in December 2000. Rachel was the girlfriend of Barri White – friend of Keith. On the 9th December 2000, Barri and Rachel had been to a nightclub, but had both gone home separately – Barri having gone to Keith’s. After being unable to get hold of Rachel, Barri assumed she had gone straight home. Three days later Rachel’s body was discovered.
Both Keith and Barri were arrested on suspicion of murder – leading to Barri being convicted of the murder of Rachel Manning and Keith being found guilty of disposing Rachel’s body and sentenced to 5 years imprisonment.
Due to the interest BBC’s Rough Justice had in the case, new forensic evidence was produced and resulting in both their convictions being overturned. Keith served 5 years in prison – in which time his business collapsed, his house was burgled meaning he lost all person possessions and he had nothing left on his release.
Even after this time, he is still yet to receive compensation from the government on the grounds that he could have been guilty of the crime. He is now a broken man who has very little in his life, but it is due to the determination and help from his parents – who he now cares for, full-time – that his innocence was proved.
The second guest speaker, Michael O’Brien, was part of the Cardiff Newsagent Three. Mike’s speech was very different to Keith’s due to the differing personalities. Mike was a typical ‘lad’, very cheeky and did used to get into mischief, but it was a totally different story when he was arrested on suspiscion of murder.
Mike and two others were convicted of the murder and robbery of Philip Saunders. It was due to his co-accused Darren Hall 
being a pathological liar which, led to him making a confession for the crimes they did not commit. During the years Mike was imprisoned he began learning areas of law with the aim of proving serious breaches of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 by the South Wales Police, and by doing so was able to take action against them. They won their appeal and were released and were given the biggest pay-out in British legal history - £1.1 million due to their civil action against the South Wales Police. Hearing from both Keith and Mike puts it all into perspective and gives you an insight into what they went through and how they’ve coped.
Dr Michael Naughton - founder of the Innocence Project - discussed the routes to take to overturn a wrongful conviction.
Cases can go through the Court of Appeal, Supreme Court and the CCRC – Criminal Cases Review Commission. The CCRC refers cases, which have already been through the appeal system and have not succeeded.
The CCRC was established because public had little confidence in the appeal system. Michael Naughton said the CCRC is not concerned with innocence, it is concerned with technical errors within legal proceedings.
S23 Criminal Appeal Act 1968 explains that there is a need for fresh evidence. If something has never been used in the previous legal proceedings, it should be allowed to be used within the appeal case as ‘fresh evidence’.
A case that was explained in detail was the Neil Hurley case:
http://www.innocent.org.uk/cases/hurley.html
Innocence projects attempt to determine whether claims of innocence are truthful or not and cannot be confined to the existing rules of the CCRC and the criminal appeals system because they can fail the innocent. This means our work – as innocence projects – is as much about trying to change the law as it is about trying to overturn cases through law.
Mark George – QC:
"If you can’t find a document in 30 seconds you might as well not have it."
This session was guidance on organising and using documents in the most productive ways.
- Sort the file.
– Index the file.
– Flag up important documents.
– Keep records of all work.
– Correspondence file.
It was advised that we all familiarise ourselves with the appeal [s] so we are aware of what have been ruled on previously giving us better grounds to look for fresh evidence.
HOLMES – Home Office Large Major Enquiry System – was explained in detail giving us more of an insight into what official documents created within HOLMES should include.
Six-Step Approach in Investigating a Claim of Innocence:
- Ensuring retention of evidence and case papers
- Understanding how and why the jury convicted the defendant
- Going beyond the trial document
- Investigating the evidence that led to conviction
- Proving innocence through DNA
- Making an application to the CCRC
Undertaking Fieldwork Investigations: Dr. Eamonn O’Neil – Investigative Journalist
- It puts paperwork into action,
- Forces the in-the-field comparison,
- Shed lights on recorded events,
- Creates new location leads at/near locus,
- And forces us to re-interpret the case.
Why should IPs visit crime scenes?
- Check evidence gathering,
- Make sense of material,
- Create fresh and relative narrative,
- Understand forensic processes that occurred,
- Track down fresh leads,
- Compare paper to the locus.
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