Miscarriages of justice
01 January 1991
Miscarriages of justice
artdoc October=1991
On 26 June, the Appeal Court decided that the convictions of the
Maguire Seven, including Guiseppe Conlon who died in prison in
1980, were unsafe and unsatisfactory. But the judgement was
regarded as far from satisfactory by the Maguire family and their
supporters. The decision to quash the 1976 convictions was on
only one of the six grounds heard by the Court, namely that `the
possibility of innocent contamination (with nitroglycerine)
cannot be excluded'. The judges therefore accepted the original
forensic evidence even though it was the interim findings of the
May inquiry into the Guildford and Maguire cases which strongly
criticised the forensic scientists involved and which finally
forced the Maguire case back to the Appeal Court. In an entirely
hypothetical example used as the basis for the Court's judgement,
Lord Justice Stuart-Smith suggested that all seven appellants may
have used the same bathroom towel, which may have been
contaminated with nitroglycerine. No evidence of explosives was
found anywhere in the house even though it was dubbed `Aunt
Annie's Bomb Factory' by the press.
At the end of June, Gareth Pierce acting for Judith Ward
submitted material to the Home Office questioning the forensic
evidence in the 1974 case. Ward was given twelve life sentences
plus thirty years for planting a bomb on an army coach which
exploded on the M62 killing nine soldiers, a soldier's wife and
her two sons. She is one of the longest serving women prisoners
in Britain and has never appealed against her conviction despite
maintaining her innocence.
Judith Ward was convicted on the basis of forensic and
confession evidence, even though at the time the coach bomb was
planted she was 100 miles away. Dr. Frank Skuse, the discredited
Home Office forensic scientist involved in the Birmingham Six
case, claimed to find traces of explosives on both of Ward's
hands using the widely-criticised Griess test. As Michael Farrell
points out, when the more sensitive Thin Layer Chromatography
test was carried out, Skuse's results were not confirmed. This
time only faint traces were reported on one of Ward's hands. The
weakness of the forensic data was clearly acknowledged during the
West Midlands police interrogation of one of the Birmingham Six,
Paddy Hill, when he was told, "you've got more `jelly' on you
than Judith Ward". It is now accepted that Hill had never touched
or handled gelignite.
Law Courts Ireland
Statewatch no 4 September/October 1991