Court quashes conviction of man twice found guilty of Bedfordshire murder | UK criminal justice

The court docket of enchantment has quashed the conviction of a person who has spent 28 years in jail for a violent homicide of which he has all the time claimed he was harmless.Justin Plummer, now 54, was convicted of the homicide of 38-year-old Janice Cartwright-Gilbert in 1998, a yr after she was fatally attacked on the constructing website of her future residence close to Wilden in Bedfordshire. Her physique was present in a burning caravan with a number of stab wounds, a knife and scissors protruding of her neck. She had been throttled with {an electrical} flex.Plummer was a prolific burglar engaged in a robbing spree on the time and had clocked up 24 convictions within the 4 months main as much as the killing. However not one of the convictions concerned violence. There was no DNA linking Plummer to the crime, no stolen objects had been recovered, and no witnesses positioned him on the scene.The unique conviction relied nearly completely on footwear mark proof – an imprint on Cartwright-Gilbert’s head alleged to match a measurement 6 Nike Air Screech coach that Plummer wore. The case additionally partly hinged on the prosecution’s argument that Plummer’s brother, Adam, had mentioned his sibling being a suspect with their mom earlier than he was arrested and subsequently Plummer should have been responsible.The knowledgeable witness who supplied the coach proof, David Lewin, was a dentist unqualified in footwear forensics. On the authentic trial, the decide mentioned in summing up Lewin’s proof: “It was one of many clearest marks he had ever seen. No different shoe might have prompted it.” However Lewin’s technique, utilizing imaging overlays, was later dominated “neither validated nor appropriate … even by late Nineteen Nineties requirements”.In 2021, the Prison Circumstances Evaluate Fee (CCRC) referred Plummer’s conviction again to the court docket of enchantment on these grounds. In 2023, Plummer, who slept on the ground in jail to protest his innocence, had his conviction overturned. The court docket dominated that the knowledgeable proof was unreliable and that the decision was unsafe.However Plummer was by no means launched. The enchantment court docket’s ruling was instantly challenged by the Crown Prosecution Service and Plummer was convicted once more in a retrial in June 2023. This time the prosecution relied on an alleged confession made by Plummer to a now deceased cellmate, Christopher Dunne. Dunne, who had schizophrenia, was a police informant and had not been cross-examined on the authentic trial. Plummer’s authorized group argued that the rumour proof was inherently flawed and unreliable.On Wednesday, in lower than 10 minutes, the court docket of enchantment quashed the 2023 conviction. The three judges dominated: “We contemplate that this conviction is unsafe as a result of the Dunne rumour proof ought to have been withdrawn from the jury even when, which now we have not determined, it was correctly admitted within the first place. For the explanations now we have defined, the Adam Plummer proof doesn’t assist the Dunne proof however relatively offers rise to additional severe considerations.”Plummer’s solicitor, Annalisa Moscardini, mentioned: “Justin Plummer is lastly vindicated for his 28-year struggle in opposition to this homicide conviction. Resulting from his refusal to just accept his guilt for a criminal offense he has all the time been clear he didn’t commit, he has served far longer than his minimal time period of 16 years. Justin’s willpower and resilience has lastly paid dividends and he’ll sleep tonight a free man, for the primary time in 28 years.”His barrister, Katy Thorne KC, mentioned: “Allowing a useless cell confession witness in a trial on an allegation of this age was merely unfair. Prisoners have all kinds of motives to offer false cell confession proof and regulation reform is required to cease such proof being a part of legal trials. Now Justin is being launched with little assist from the state. The system must be reformed to offer correct assist to such victims of miscarriage of justice.”