Criminal Cases Review Commission: Discretion to Refer Cases
| DOI | 10.1350/jcla.69.3.197.64776 |
| Date | 01 June 2005 |
| Author | Alan Davenport |
| Published date | 01 June 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Divisional Court |
Divisional Court
Criminal Cases Review Commission:
Discretion to Refer Cases
Westlake vCriminal Cases Review Commission [2004] EWHC 2779
(Admin), The Times (19 November 2004)
Timothy Evans was convicted of the murder of his daughter in January
1950. A further charge, that of murdering his wife, was ordered to lie on
the file. The prosecution case was that one person had murdered both
victims. Evans, who was of below average intelligence and had a sug-
gestible personality, made a number of oral admissions to the police,
although he subsequently retracted the confession on which the pro-
secution relied at trial. Certain exculpatory witness statements were
withheld from the defence and were never put before the original trial.
After an unsuccessful appeal, Evans was executed in March 1950.
In 1953, John Christie, a neighbour of the Evans family, was con-
victed of a number of murders. During police questioning Christie had
admitted to murdering Mrs Evans and there were marked similarities
between the way in which Christie had murdered and concealed his
other victims and the murder of Mrs Evans. The admissions led to a
series of inquiries into the conviction of Timothy Evans. The initial
inquiry in 1953 was led by Mr Scott-Henderson QC. He concluded that
there had been no miscarriage of justice in the Evans case.
This inquiry did not succeed in assuaging public concern over the
case. Ludovic Kennedy’s book, 10 Rillington Place, published in 1961
presented what the court in the instant case referred to as ‘a convincing
destruction of the case against Timothy Evans and of the conclusions of
the Scott-Henderson report’ ([2004] EWHC 2779 (Admin) at [8]) and
this book and further public pressure led to a second inquiry under
Brabin J which published its report in October 1966. The Brabin report
concluded that whilst on the balance of probabilities Timothy Evans was
innocent of the murder of his daughter, he had probably killed his wife.
This report was inconsistent with the Scott-Henderson report and its
conclusion undermined the foundation of the original prosecution case
that one person had been responsible for both deaths.
There had been calls for Timothy Evans to be granted a free pardon.
At that time, the generally accepted practice, as set out in a Home Office
Memorandum, was that the Home Secretary would not recommend
that the monarch exercise the prerogative to grant a pardon unless two
conditions were satisfied. First, the Home Secretary had to be convinced
that the person was innocent of the offence of which he had been
convicted and, secondly, that he neither committed any other offence
nor did he have any intention of doing do. On the basis of the Brabin
report, it appeared that Evans satisfied neither of these criteria. Never-
theless, within a week of the publication of the Brabin report, Timothy
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