The case of the Cardiff Five proves that juries will ignore the law if they believe it just to do so. Miller's confession dominated proceedings in 1990. The judge directed the jury that could only rely on Miller's confession as evidence against him – it could not be used against his co-accused at all. Nevertheless, they ignored both his directions and strong evidence that Yusef Abdullahi was working on a ship almost ten miles away throughout the night of the murder, as they plainly did not believe anything but Miller's false confession. It is the only thing that explains why three were found guilty and two were acquitted.

The jury refused to put it in the neat compartment against Miller only that Mr Justice Leonard thought they would after a few seemingly well-chosen words from himself. It shows yet again that confessions have a psychological impact throughout the criminal justice system – including on judges and juries. Judges naïvely believe that their directions can outweigh the temptation to cut through the niceties of the law regarding confessions, ignoring the powerful effect that confessions – even ludicrous ones like Miller's – have upon ordinary people. They are too effective as from top to bottom the criminal justice system functions on the erroneous belief that guilty people confess and the few innocents who do will be protected by safeguards that will weed out unreliable confessions. Far too often the safeguards fail – sometimes miserably as in this case.

In Miller's case it was neither true, nor obtained lawfully and the lessons have to be learned, especially as it had the added complication of securing the wrongful convictions of Yusef Abdullahi and Tony Paris as well. The judge did not appreciate the impact that confessions have on juries. It was an unrealistic expectation to believe that the jury would be able to put from their minds the lurid, graphic, sensational and above all, totally inaccurate confession of Stephen Miller when considering their verdicts against his co-accused.

Only severing their trial from his could have achieved that, yet more than fifteen years after their convictions were quashed little has changed – co-accused like Abdullahi and Paris still appear in the dock alongside people who have confessed. In such cases those are not just confessions, they are often compelling accusations too, even though they are not admissible against them and as in Miller's case they may well be completely false too and not even admissible against anyone at all.

by Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (December 27th 2008)