Royce was only allowed to add one third of his starting point (fifteen years) for aggravating circumstances. In this case they were the brutality of the crime and the fact that he had allowed innocent people to be convicted for his crime. Royce added four years and six months for that. He then gave Gafoor credit for an early guilty plea (he has to allow one sixth for that) and also for assisting the police with their current investigation into what went wrong. He deducted three years and six months for mitigation and because Gafoor was caught in 2003 Royce had to apply the law as it was then, which meant that he had to add the amount to twelve years – the standard tariff at that time. Consequently, Gafoor – the real murderer - received a significantly lower tariff than innocent people he allowed to go to jail. The Cardiff Five served a total of sixteen years hard time in prison. There is a real possibility that the real murderer will serve less time in prison than the real murderer.

This is obscene and it sends out a message that it is far better to allow the innocent to be convicted and do nothing than take responsibility for their crime. Previously tariffs were determined by the Home Secretary, but after a challenge to the European Court of Human Rights, the court in Strasbourg ruled that the law had to be changed. Ironically a decision that gave the powers to set tariffs to judges deprived them of the very discretion they required to deliver justice based on the particular facts of individual cases. Mr Justice Royce found his hands firmly tied when he came to impose the tariff on Gafoor. The law resulted in serious aggravating circumstances only outweighing comparatively trivial mitigating circumstances by just a year. Meanwhile, the system is weighted further in Gafoor’s favour, as he can express remorse, attend the relevant courses and even use the fact that he assisted the inquiry into what went wrong in the original inquiry to support his parole application. He can point to the fact that in almost eleven years before his arrest on suspicion of the murder of Lynette White he had not come to the attention of police. His only conviction was an assault on a colleague at work in 1992, which resulted in a non-custodial sentence.

If Jeffrey Gafoor serves less time in prison than the innocent men he left to rot for his crime, it will be an insult to every concept of justice. It is too late for the Cardiff Five, but there will be other cases of vindication where the same issues arise. It is not too late to give judges the unfettered discretion to set appropriate tariffs in such cases that fit the individual circumstances of those cases. It can’t help the Cardiff Five, but justice must surely reflect society’s disgust at criminals who not only commit terrible crimes, but allow innocent people to pay the price of their crimes as well. Anything less disgraces the very name of justice.

by Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (January 31st 2009)