Just over five years ago (July 4th) legal history was made in Britain when South Wales Police became the first in Britain to correctly resolve a miscarriage of justice by convicting the truly guilty, but amid the euphoria the victims of this case continue to suffer. Jeffrey Gafoor – a former security guard – pleaded guilty to the horrific Valentine’s Day 1988 murder of Lynette White. Despite searching for a bloodstained white man ten months later five black men – Yusef Abdullahi, the cousins John and Ronnie Actie, Stephen Miller and Tony Paris – were arrested. After the longest murder trial in British history the Acties were acquitted in November 1990. The trial ended in the conviction of the Cardiff Three. In December 1992 they were freed on appeal with the ringing endorsement of the Lord Chief Justice. Lynette’s natural mother Peggy Pesticcio and I eventually forced the inquiry to be re-opened for the first time. Within a year of the publication of my book on the case Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry the case was opened again. By then the whispering campaign – a thoroughly erroneous one – was in full flow.

An excellent investigation – second time round – resulted in the conviction of Gafoor, then 38, but what about the victims? Tony Paris demanded an immediate apology. Detective Chief Superintendent Wynne Phillips didn’t give it. A week later the five original defendants received written apologies. Lynette’s family are still waiting. They will never get their daughter back. And innocent men will never recover from a twenty year ordeal that still continues despite proof that they are innocent and nor will their families. For fifteen years they were all denied justice as were the people of South Wales and society. Lynette’s family had hated the wrong people. How are they supposed to deal with this? Her father, the late Terry White, once pursued John Actie with a firearm. He could have killed an entirely innocent man.

Despite the government establishing the Miscarriages of Justice Service five years on the Cardiff Five are excluded from accessing it. “I get no official help at all to rebuild my life,” said Yusef Abdullahi. They were all young men in their twenties, living on the fringes of the law then, but twenty years later, they have not recovered, nor received assistance. This has affected their families too. Despite being completely innocent they have to fend for themselves. Public services have to cope with problems they are not equipped to deal with. Meanwhile, the Miscarriage of Justice Service – designed to help people like them – is forced to exclude them because their remit permits them to help only miscarriage of justice victims who have lost a first appeal.

An investigation into possible criminal conduct in the original inquiry began five years ago. On October 17th the perjury trial of one of the witnesses in that case Mark Grommek, 50, began. Further charges may follow. There is no similar inquiry into any other case in South Wales. “The real victims here are Stephen Miller, John and Ronnie Actie, Yusef Abdullahi and Anthony Paris – and of course Lynette White,” said Nicholas Dean QC in his opening address at Grommek’s trial. This case has already cost millions of pounds. Not a penny of that has been spent on any of the victims of this case. “I want to see the system fully restore my client to the life he should have had,” said Abdullahi’s former Queen’s Counsel, Roger Backhouse, who still provides some assistance to Abdullahi. “The system should at least try to help them. It is the very least it can do.” Stolen Lives – a documentary on the subject – is in production.

The public has lost confidence in the criminal justice system, believing that criminals get off too lightly. The government recently responded to Louise Casey’s report on it. Gafoor, should have got a very high tariff – the minimum that must be served before becoming eligible for parole. Not only did he commit the most brutal murder of its type in Welsh history at the time, but he allowed innocent men to serve a total of sixteen years in prison for his crime. Gafoor could expect and deserved no mercy, especially as the clearly innocent Cardiff Three received tariffs of up to twenty years. When he sentenced Gafoor to life imprisonment, Mr Justice Royce told him, “You allowed innocent men to go to prison for a crime that you knew you had committed.” Both that and the fact that he had stabbed Lynette over fifty times outweighed his guilty plea fifteen years afterwards and assistance with the ongoing inquiry into what went wrong by just one year. Three years ago Royce imposed a tariff of just thirteen years.

Gafoor’s tariff was considerably less than tariffs imposed on the entirely innocent Cardiff Three. “I think it is outrageous that he got a lower tariff than us,” said Tony Paris. “He was guilty and we were innocent. He let five men get charged for what he did and three get life sentences. And when you consider that at any time one or all of us could have committed suicide while he remained at liberty, I don’t think that this is genuine remorse.”

Paris believes that victims of miscarriages of justice who have been vindicated like himself are the forgotten victims of crimes. A written apology from former Chief Constable of South Wales Police, Sir Anthony Burden is all they have to show for the resolution of the miscarriage of justice that blighted their lives and those of their families. Mr Paris wants the criminal justice system to punish guilty people who allow the innocent to suffer. “Our feelings should have been taken into account when the judge set his tariff,” said Paris. “The law should have given us the same opportunity as Lynette’s family to say what this case has done to us.” It still doesn’t.

He has Parliamentary support to free judges to set appropriate tariffs in such circumstances with a mixture of rewarding real perpetrators who try to correct miscarriages with lower tariffs and punishing those who allow the innocent to suffer for their crimes with increased tariffs, but the government has no plans to change it. “Having chosen a suitable starting point, a court will then adjust that period either up or down to take account of any aggravating or mitigating factors, to arrive at the final minimum term,” wrote Minister of State David Hanson. Despite the serious aggravating circumstances and the real possibility that Gafoor will serve less actual prison time than the Cardiff Five, the Ministry of Justice refuse to even acknowledge that there is a problem.

Mr Justice Royce had little option but to impose that tariff, which didn’t take into account that Gafoor did not come forward voluntarily. He waited until confronted by irrefutable scientific evidence before pleading guilty. The Ministry of Justice described the proposal to close the loophole that Gafoor exploited as ‘too detailed.’ Brutal murderers can expect more lenient treatment than innocent people they allow to go to jail. Casey’s report did not consider the effect of this on public confidence in the system.

The Cardiff Five won’t benefit from such a change in the law. Ronnie Actie was deprived of even the small comfort of knowing that his case helped to prevent other innocent people suffering at the hands of the truly guilty. He was found dead last September 27th, aged just 49. It is believed to have been of natural causes.

It has happened in other cases too. Last November Ronald Castree was told the he would have to spend the next thirty years behind bars for the murder of Lesley Molseed over three decades ago. Stefan Kiszko spent over sixteen years in prison for that crime. It is too late for both Kiszko and his campaigning mother Charlotte. Both died soon after his release. Two years ago Rickie and Danny Preddie were sentenced to eight years imprisonment for the manslaughter in November 2000 of Damilola Taylor. Four teenage boys originally stood trial six years ago and were acquitted.

Five years after the whispering campaign was silenced by Gafoor’s conviction little has changed. There is still no provision of care for all the victims of this case. There is still no apology to Lynette’s family and there are still no plans to provide even parity in sentencing for the truly guilty who have allowed innocent people to suffer, let alone punishment for allowing it to happen. Justice has yet to be delivered in full to them and others who have finally been vindicated. Some MPs are considering an Early Day Motion to prevent the truly guilty being treated more leniently than the innocent.

 © Satish Sekar (October 19th 2008)