[citation needed] A further complication turned on the fact that Davis might never have been committed for trial from the lower courts had blood test results been disclosed at the committal stage.
Although it subsequently became clear that evidence had by then become available to police, it was suppressed and this abuse of due process became one of the core allegations relied upon by those campaigning for the release of Davis.
At as late as November 1974 on a third bail application, this time before a judge in chambers, and after committals had been completed (28 October) the police were saying that they still awaited the blood results from forensic.
"[2]On 19 August 1975, while Davis was serving a 20-year prison sentence for the Ilford LEB robbery, his supporters dug holes in the pitch and poured oil over one end of the wicket at the Headingley Cricket Ground, preventing further play in the Test match between England and Australia.
[citation needed] The campaign was also characterised by the graffiti “GEORGE DAVIS IS INNOCENT OK” or some variant thereof, in plain white paint, appearing on dozens of walls and bridges in London and on motorways.
In particular, among these core activists (who had supported and helped organise "defence campaigns" in connection with The Angry Brigade arrests and criminal prosecutions) were a number who went on to establish Up Against The Law (UPAL), a London-based "political collective".
[7] In September 1975, Peter Chappell while awaiting trial in prison for the August 1975 Headingley sabotage, wrote to UPAL: "When this campaign started 18 months ago I was completely on my own and, if the truth were known, I was probably being labelled as a well meaning nut case, even in East London with no friends at all that I could seriously talk to about Davis’s case… I value UPAL’S help a great deal … I thought that I must find other people and that if I make sacrifices then sooner or later others would join the fight….
Jenkins undertook this highly exceptional exercise of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy because of doubts over the evidence presented by the police which helped convict Davis.
However, according to a report in The Independent written by the newspaper's Law Editor, Robert Verkaik, Davis and one of his original trial barristers, David Whitehouse, later a QC, intended to make representations to the Criminal Cases Review Commission in the hope that they would return to court citing new evidence and establish Davis's innocence and seek compensation for his period of imprisonment.
One of the judges, Lord Justice Hughes, said that the conviction, based on dubious identification evidence, was unsafe but that the court was not able positively to exonerate Davis.
[16] His first wife, Rose Dean-Davis (d. 31 January 2009), wrote a book, The Wars of Rosie: Hard Knocks, Endurance and the 'George Davis Is Innocent' Campaign in 2008.