The murder of Stephen Lawrence is a tragedy on every level. Perhaps it could not have been prevented, but the travesty of an investigation could have been if the lessons of the murder of Rolan Adams in 1991 had been learned. The Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) claimed victory because Mark Thornborrow was found guilty.
If this was a victory, it occurred in spite of both organisations, not because of them. Police developed a case-scenario that removed racism from the crime. Why? Only the racist-epithet hurling thugs claimed that it was not racist. Thornborrow – racist to the end – claimed that he had heard that 'n****rs' were coming to the area, so he armed himself with a butterfly knife. Thornborrow's defence counsel, Michael Lawson, even suggested that calling a black person 'a black bastard' was not necessarily racist. His Honour Judge Kenneth Richardson, presided over the trial, which laid bare the racism of the crimes and also the shamefully racist conniving of police and CPS. Their collusion handed an undeserved defence of Thornborrow's defence. The cowardly killer brazenly claimed that racism played no part in the crime – they were just defending their patch. Worse still he was defending himself.
Collusion The police's view of the crime reflected the opinion of the perpetrators. The CPS bought into this nonsense and removed the real motive from the crime. They presented it as a territorial dispute rather than the despicable hate-crime that it was. The investigation was shoddy, betraying the institutional racism prevalent at the time. The Metropolitan Police was eventually forced to confront its failings during the inquiry into their handling of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. Sir Paul Condon, then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police accepted the definition and the force moved on. The CPS evaded the scrutiny that it should have faced – a failing that could be seen in 1991.
Why did it rely exclusively on the police's view of the murder of Rolan Adams, or ignore evidence that it was a racist murder? It had powers to require further work to be conducted. It failed to do so. It allowed its counsel to remove racism from the murder. It chose the comfort of collusion that protected racist thugs. It connived to remove the racism from the murder.
The CPS proved by its actions in the Rolan Adams Inquiry that it was as institutionally racist as the police, but unlike them, it did not confront or even accept its failings. Why was this outrage tolerated? Had a public inquiry been held into the racist murder of Rolan Adams and the shameful investigation and prosecution that followed, Stephen Lawrence's family may have seen justice done, as they had a right to expect.
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