Derek Bentley
Derek Bentley | |
---|---|
Execution by hanging | |
Resting place |
|
Known for | Wrongful conviction and execution |
Criminal status | Executed (1953)
|
Conviction(s) | Murder (overturned) |
Criminal penalty | Death by hanging |
Partner(s) | Christopher Craig |
Derek William Bentley (30 June 1933 – 28 January 1953) was a British man who was
The jury at the trial found Bentley guilty based in large part on the
The Bentley case became a
Early life
Derek Bentley entered Norbury Manor
Health and mental development
Bentley had a series of health problems. His parents reported that in a childhood accident he had broken his nose and since then he had three seizure fits, including one in which they said he nearly died of choking.[2] The family also said they were bombed out three times during the Second World War, and in one of these incidents the house in which he lived collapsed around him, but a court did not find any indication that he was physically injured in the incident. However, Bentley was later seen to have epilepsy.[3]: 102
Bentley was sent to Kingswood Training School, Bristol, on 27 October 1948.
Bentley was examined twice by
Release from Kingswood
Bentley was released from Kingswood school on 28 July 1950, a year early, though he was told that he would remain under the care of Kingswood until 29 September 1954, by which time he was dead. He was a recluse for the rest of 1950, rarely venturing out of the house, breaking his isolation in January 1951.
In March 1951, he was employed by a furniture removal firm but was forced to leave the job after injuring his back in March 1952. In May 1952, Bentley was taken on by the Croydon Corporation as a dustbin man; one month later, in June 1952 he was demoted to street sweeping for unsatisfactory performance. One month after that, he was sacked by the corporation. He was still unemployed at the time of his arrest in November 1952.[5]
Crime
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On the night of Sunday, 2 November 1952,[6] Bentley and a 16-year-old companion, Christopher Craig, attempted to burgle the warehouse of the Barlow & Parker confectionery company at 27–29 Tamworth Road, Croydon. Craig armed himself with a Colt New Service .455 Webley calibre revolver, the barrel of which he had shortened so that it could be carried easily in his pocket. He also carried a number of undersized rounds for the revolver, some of which he had modified by hand to fit the gun. Bentley carried a knuckle-duster, which he had been given by Craig, who had been fined the previous year for possessing a firearm without a certificate.[7]
At around 9:15 pm, neighbours called police after spotting Craig and Bentley climbing over the gate and up a drainpipe to the roof of the warehouse. When police arrived, Craig and Bentley hid behind the lift-housing. Craig taunted the police. One of the officers, Detective Constable
A group of uniformed police officers arrived and were sent onto the roof. The first to reach the roof was
Trial
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Both Craig and Bentley were charged with the murder of PC Miles the following day, 3 November 1952. They were tried by jury before the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard, at the Old Bailey in London between 9 December and 11 December 1952. Christmas Humphreys, Senior Treasury Counsel, led for the prosecution.[8]
At the time of the burglary attempt and Miles's death, murder was a capital offence in England and Wales. Minors under 18 were not sentenced to death: consequently, of the two defendants, despite Craig having fired the fatal shot, only Bentley faced the death penalty if convicted. The doctrine of felony murder or "constructive malice" meant that a charge of manslaughter was not an option, as the "malicious intent" of the armed robbery was transferred to the shooting. Bentley's best defence was that he was effectively under arrest when Miles was killed. There were three principal points of contention at trial:
Firstly, the defence claimed there was ambiguity in the evidence as to how many shots were fired and by whom. A later
Secondly, there was controversy over the existence and meaning of Bentley's alleged instruction to Craig, "let him have it, Chris". Craig and Bentley denied that Bentley had said the words while the police officers testified that he had said them. Further, Bentley's counsel argued that even if he had said the words, it could not be proven that Bentley had intended the words to mean the informal meaning of "shoot him, Chris" instead of the literal meaning of "give him the gun, Chris".
Thirdly, there was disagreement over whether Bentley was fit to stand trial in light of his mental capacity. The Principal Medical Officer responsible was Dr Matheson and he referred Bentley to Dr Hill, a
The jury took 75 minutes to decide that both Craig and Bentley were guilty of Miles's murder, with a plea for mercy for Bentley. Bentley was
Bentley was originally scheduled to be hanged on 30 December 1952 but this was postponed to allow for an
Denial of reprieve
When his appeal was turned down, Bentley's life was placed in the hands of the Home Secretary, David Maxwell Fyfe, who had to decide whether to recommend that the Queen exercise the royal prerogative of mercy to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment. Lord Goddard forwarded the jury's recommendation of mercy, but added that he himself "could find no mitigating circumstances".[9] His later statements to author David Yallop convinced Yallop that Goddard had wanted a reprieve.[10]
Maxwell Fyfe's autobiography, published in 1964, refers to the factors which he took into consideration: "the evidence of the trial, medical reports, family or other private circumstances ... and police reports, ... the available precedents, and ... public opinion". He went on to say that Bentley's case also involved the issue of the police force, since it was a police officer who was killed. Maxwell Fyfe then stresses that a reprieve would mean the Home Secretary is "intervening in the due process of the law".[11]
There was much political pressure to commute Bentley's sentence, including a memorandum signed by over 200 members of Parliament. Despite several attempts, Parliament was given no opportunity to debate the issue until the sentence had been carried out.[12] The Home Office also refused Dr Hill permission to make his report public.
At 9 am on 28 January 1953, Bentley was hanged at
In March 1966, Bentley's remains were removed from Wandsworth and re-interred in
To Encourage the Others
This section relies largely or entirely on a single source. (August 2023) |
In his 1971 book To Encourage the Others (the title is an acknowledged allusion to
The standard Metropolitan Police pistol at the time was the .32-calibre Webley automatic, a number of which were issued on the night. In his book The Scientific Investigation of Crime, the prosecution's ballistics expert Lewis Nickolls stated that he recovered four bullets from the roof, two of .45, one of .41 and one of .32 calibre. The last was not entered as an exhibit in the trial, nor mentioned in Nickolls' evidence to the court.
When Yallop telephoned Haler the day after the initial interview, he reportedly confirmed his estimate of the bullet size. Shortly before the publication of Yallop's book, Haler was provided with a transcript of the interview, and Yallop says Haler again confirmed as accurate. After the subsequent broadcast of the BBC Play for Today adaptation of To Encourage the Others, directed by Alan Clarke and starring Charles Bolton, Haler sought to deny that he had given any specific estimate of the size of the bullet that killed Miles beyond being "of large calibre". The .32 ACP bullet is not considered to be of large calibre.
Contrary to Yallop's claims, none of the police officers present was armed at the moment when PC Miles was shot. Det Con (later Det Sgt) Fairfax, after Miles was shot and after taking Bentley to street level and putting him into a police car, returned to the roof armed with a Webley & Scott .32 and fired two shots at Craig, both of which missed. Since a .32 round could not be loaded into Craig's revolver and Craig was the only armed person in the vicinity at the time of the murder, the spent .32 round could only be one of Fairfax's, fired some time subsequently. As the Court of Appeal found, 'Once the appellant [Bentley] had been taken down, D.C. Fairfax returned with a firearm, with which he had been issued, and went back up to the roof. He fired twice at Craig but missed, Craig having fired at him. Craig's revolver was by now empty and he jumped or dived off the roof, suffering a fractured spine, breast bone and left forearm. Notwithstanding this, he was able to tell the first police officer who reached him that he wished he had "killed the fucking lot". He later made a number of statements to police officers sitting with him in hospital, displaying a hatred of the police and a total lack of remorse at what he had done.'[14]
Posthumous pardon and appeal
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Following the execution there was a public sense of unease about the decision, resulting in a long campaign to secure a posthumous pardon. The campaign was initially led by Bentley's parents until their deaths in the 1970s, after which the drive to clear Bentley's name was led by his sister Iris. In March 1966 his remains were removed from
Eventually, on 30 July 1998, the Court of Appeal quashed Bentley's conviction for murder.[2] However, Bentley's sister Iris had died of cancer the year before.[15] Her daughter, Maria Bentley-Dingwall, who was born 10 years after Derek Bentley's execution, continued the campaign after her mother's death.[16]
Christopher Craig, by then aged 62 (born May 1936), issued a statement welcoming the pardon for Bentley, stating that "his innocence has now been proved". He also apologised to the families of both PC Miles and Bentley for his actions, as well as his own family for the press intrusion they had suffered over the years.[17]
Though Bentley had never been accused of attacking any of the police officers, who were shot at by Craig, for him to be convicted of murder as an accessory in a joint enterprise it was necessary for the prosecution to prove that he knew that Craig had a deadly weapon when they began the break-in. The
Another factor in the posthumous defence was that a "confession" recorded by Bentley, which was claimed by the prosecution to be a "verbatim record of dictated monologue", was shown by
In popular culture
A play Example, starring Harry Miller as Bentley, was devised by the Coventry Belgrade TIE Team for fifth and sixth form students and toured from 1975. The play, with an introduction by Miller, was included in a 1980 book Theatre in Education – Four Secondary School Programmes.
The 1990 book Let Him Have It, Chris written by
The 1991 feature film Let Him Have It, starring Christopher Eccleston as Bentley and Paul Reynolds as Craig, relates the story,[19] as do the songs "Derek Bentley" by Karl Dallas (in which the lyrics imply that Bentley was guilty but sympathise with him), "Let Him Dangle" by Elvis Costello, "Let Him Have It" by The Bureau, and "Bentley and Craig" by Ralph McTell, whose mother was a friend of the Bentley family, also covered by June Tabor (on Aleyn, TSCD490, 1997).
In the 2013 novel
See also
References
- ^ Luu, Chi (6 September 2017). "Sentenced to Death (and Other Tales from the Dark Side of Language)". JSTOR Daily. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
- ^ a b c d e R v Bentley (Deceased) [1998] EWCA Crim 2516 (30 July 1998)
- ISBN 1-871-61216-0
- ^ "Bentley (Deceased), R v | [1999] Crim LR 330 | England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) | Judgment | Law | CaseMine". www.casemine.com. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-552-13451-4.
- ^ Watson, Geoffrey (2016). "Let him have it: the short, sad life of Derek Bentley" (PDF). The New South Wales Bar Association. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
- ^ The Trial of Craig and Bentley - Montgomery Hyde
- ISBN 0-415-00907-3.
- required.)
- ISBN 9780552134514.
- ^ Kilmuir, 1st Earl of (1964). Political adventure: the memoirs of the Earl of Kilmuir. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. p. 206.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ "Efforts to save Bentley Fail". The Guardian. 28 January 1953. Retrieved 8 May 2015.
- ^ London Cemeteries: An Illustrated Guide and Gazetteer, by Hugh Meller & Brian Parsons.
- ^ Bentley (Deceased), R v [1998] EWCA Crim 2516, 30 July 1998, retrieved 28 September 2020
- ^ "Derek Bentley's sister dies". The Independent. 23 January 1997. Retrieved 8 May 2015.
- ^ "Bentley cleared after 45 years". www.derekbentley.com.
- ^ "Craig's relief at Bentley pardon". bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 8 May 2015.
- ^ R.M. Coulthard (2000): "Whose text is it? On the linguistic investigation of authorship", in S. Sarangi and R.M. Coulthard: Discourse and Social Life, London, Longman, pp. 270–287
- ISBN 9780740754609. Retrieved 12 November 2012.
Cited works and further reading
- Berry-Dee, Christopher; Odell, Robinn (1991). Dad, Help Me Please: The Story of Derek Bentley. London: W. H. Allen. ISBN 978-1-852-27131-2.
- Heard, Brian J. (2011). Handbook of Firearms and Ballistics: Examining and Interpreting Forensic Evidence. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Inc. ISBN 978-1-119-96477-3.
- Lane, Brian (1991). The Murder Guide to Great Britain. London: Robinson Publishing Ltd. ISBN 1-854-87083-1.
- Wynn, Douglas (1996). On Trial for Murder. Pan Books. p. 205. ISBN 0-09472-990-5.