It prompted an inspection and investigation by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, to the abolition of the Police Complaints Authority and to an inquiry by Judge Gerald Butler into the work of the Crown Prosecution Service.
[citation needed] Early in the morning of 16 December 1994, Lapite left a restaurant in Hackney, London, where he had stopped to buy some friends a few drinks.
The coroner, Dr Stephen Chan,[5] found more than 40 injuries on Lapite's body, including a crushed voice box and severe bruising across his back.
[4] The only injuries suffered by the police officers were a scratch on the tip of McCallum's finger and a bite mark on Wright's shoulder where he was applying the neck hold.
[9] The Strasbourg-based committee, operating under the European torture convention, prepared a report on their visit which was sent to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in March 1998.
As a result of these decisions, "additional safeguards" were put in place by the Attorney General (the Minister who is accountable to Parliament for the work of the CPS).
[citation needed] These additional safeguards are to remain in place until consideration has been given to the findings of Judge Gerald Butler's review into CPS decision-making in such cases".
[9] In reviewing the whole process of complaints made of the conduct of individual police officers, and in particular the fact that even after a successful civil claim for damages there remains little likelihood of the officer facing criminal or internal disciplinary proceedings, the Committee said, "the CPT has formed the view that, as matters stand, many victims of police misconduct may have little realistic prospect of other than pecuniary redress.
[9] Two other cases, those of Lapite and Derek Treadaway, were added to the enquiry's remit and in August 1999 Judge Gerald Butler QC published his findings.
[6] He found that nobody at the CPS, including the former director of public prosecutions, Dame Barbara Mills QC, was prepared to take responsibility for deciding not to prosecute police officers, and that this meant that a middle-ranking CPS lawyer had made key assessments on the death of Shiji Lapite which should have been referred to more senior solicitors or outside counsel.