Stephen Downing

The Case of Stephen Downing (eBook, ePUB)

The Worst Miscarriage of Justice in British History

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The memoir of a man wrongfully convicted of murder and his 27 years spent in the U.K. prison system until his conviction was overturned. On September 12, 1973, seventeen-year-old, naïve gardener Stephen Downing returned from his lunch break to discover the badly beaten, unconscious, thirty-two-year-old Wendy Sewell lying on the footpath of Bakewell Cemetery close to Catcliff Wood and the consecrated chapel where she had been attacked. Stephen ran to the nearby workmen's building, and in the meantime Wendy's attacker returned and dragged her body to a second location where she was subsequently found soon after. Despite having learning difficulties, Downing was immediately taken into custody, questioned at length without a solicitor, and eventually signed a false confession statement. Wendy died some two days later from her injuries. Following a very biased, three-day trial during February, 1974, Downing was found guilty by a jury, convicted, and sentenced to what was eventually a full life sentence. Just eight months later during October, 1974, there followed an appeal with fresh evidence from an eye witness who saw Wendy Sewell alive after Downing left the cemetery for lunch. However, the prosecution trashed this evidence, and the appeal failed. In the years following Downing's incarceration, he was moved from prison to prison, continuing to maintain his innocence-and in doing so, jeopardizing any chance of parole, as he was "In Denial of Murder"-until eventually his plight reached journalist Don Hale. Hale's tireless efforts led to an appeal in which Downing was released after some twenty-seven years, the longest miscarriage of justice in the United Kingdom's legal history.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Pen & Sword Books
• Seitenzahl: 192
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. April 2021
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781526742032
• Artikelnr.: 61384222

Autorenporträt

Stephen Downing grew up in the small Derbyshire town of Bakewell. His life was uneventful until the age of 17 when he was arrested and subsequently convicted of murder. Stephen didn't know it at the time but ended up serving 27 years in various prisons before being released by the Courts of Appeal. On release from prison Stephen moved back to the town he grew up in only to find that the police were very unforgiving and would continue to hold blame over him together with the authorities would take the unprecedented action to withold all evidence from him and his supporters for 95 years preventing any investigation to completely prove his innocence.