Guildford Four and Maguire Seven
[citation needed] On 22 October 1975, at the Old Bailey in London, the Guildford Four were convicted of bombings carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).
[4] In the wake of the scandal, in October 1989 the UK Government appointed Appeal Court Justice Sir John May to undertake a judicial inquiry into the suspect convictions of the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven.
It unearthed improprieties in the handling of scientific evidence that were relevant to the other cases and declared the convictions unsound and recommended referral back to the Court of Appeal,[5] but no action was taken.
[11] Conlon wrote in his autobiography that a key factor in his coerced confession was that anti-terrorism laws passed in the early 1970s allowed the police to hold suspects without charges for up to a week, and that he might have been able to withstand the treatment he had received had a shorter time limit been in effect.
Justice Lord Donaldson of Lymington, who also presided over the Maguire Seven trial, expressed regret that the Four had not been charged with high treason, which still had a mandatory death penalty.
The Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven sought leave to appeal their convictions immediately and were refused, but a growing body of disparate groups pressed for reexamination of the case.
In February 1977, during the trial of the Balcombe Street ASU, the four IRA men instructed their lawyers to "draw attention to the fact that four totally innocent people were serving massive sentences", referring to the Guildford Four.
Hill had also been convicted of the murder of a British soldier, Brian Shaw, based on his confession while in the custody of Surrey Police.
On 12 July 1990, the Home Secretary, David Waddington, published Interim Report on the Maguire Case: The Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the convictions arising out of the bomb attacks in Guildford and Woolwich in 1974, which criticised the trial judge, Donaldson, unearthed improprieties in the handling of scientific evidence, declared the convictions unsound, and recommended referral back to the Court of Appeal.
[22] The report "strongly criticise[d] the decision by the prosecution at the Guildford Four's trial not to disclose to the defence a statement supporting Mr Conlon's alibi.
Three British police officers—Thomas Style, John Donaldson and Vernon Attwell—were charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, but each was found not guilty.
[24] On 9 February 2005, Prime Minister Tony Blair apologised to the families of the 11 people imprisoned for the bombings in Guildford and Woolwich and those related to those who were still alive.
"[25] The Roman Catholic Church awarded Anne Maguire a Benemerenti medal for her 'remarkable ability to forgive' and her community work.
[31] Sarah Conlon, who spent 16 years campaigning to have the names of her husband and son cleared and helped secure the apology, died on 20 July 2008.
[36] Gerry Conlon later joined a campaign to free the "Craigavon Two", Brendan McConville and John Paul Wootton, convicted of the murder of a police officer in Northern Ireland.
[37] Sir John Donaldson went on to an illustrious judicial career and became Master of the Rolls, Head of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal.
[38] Many of the key figures in the British legal and criminal justice establishment who were responsible for the wrongful prosecution of the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven, while later facing public criticism, were never formally held accountable for their role in the scandal.
In 2013, in what is believed to be the final media interview he gave before his premature death in 2014,[39] Gerry Conlon told Italian documentary maker and photographer Lorenzo Moscia[40] that every key British figure involved in his wrongful conviction had subsequently been promoted and reached the top of their respective profession.
[citation needed] Lord Chief Justice Lane later called this investigation "a sequence of false confessions and police deceits.
He was appointed to the House of Lords as a life peer as Baron Imbert, of New Romney in the County of Kent in 1999,[44] sitting as a crossbencher.
Edward Heath, Prime Minister since 1970, had banned sensory deprivation in light of the report by Sir Edmund Compton into internment and interrogation techniques used by the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
"[45] Skelhorn retired as DPP before the publication of the critical report by Lord Devlin published in 1977 recommended statutory prosecution safeguards, on which the then Callaghan Government took no action.
In the case of the Guildford Four, the DPP was found to have suppressed alibi evidence that supported Gerry Conlon's and Paul Hill's claims of innocence.
The DPP, for which Havers was acting, was also found to have suppressed confessions by Provisional IRA bombers in the Balcombe Street Gang, claiming responsibility for the Guildford and Woolwich bombings.
While it was never directly shown that Havers knew of the evidence the DPP suppressed, many, including Labour MP Chris Mullin, cast doubt on his integrity in the matter in his submission to the May Inquiry into the wrongful convictions.
