"It must be a matter of profound and continuing regret that this mis-trial occurred and that the defects we have found were not recognised at the time."
So runs the defining sentence of the judgment on the appeal against conviction of Derek Bentley, hanged in January 1953 at the age of 19 for the murder of a policeman, a murder he did not commit.
In November 1952 two boys, Christopher Craig and Derek Bentley, had set out to rob a confectionery warehouse. They were spotted by neighbours and the police called. During the roof-top shoot-out that followed a policeman, PC Sydney Miles, was shot dead. Craig, the instigator of the bungled robbery, was armed with a gun. What followed was a tragedy, and not only for the policeman who was killed.
Craig, who pulled the trigger, was only 16, too young to die, so Bentley, who had just turned 19, would have to do instead. And so it was that an epileptic with a mental age of 11 was hanged in Wandsworth Prison on January 28th, 1953.
The appeal upheld this week was not the first in the case. On January 13th, 1953, when Derek Bentley was still alive, three High Court judges heard the appeal against conviction and sentence. The fact that the trial judge was in effect their boss, the Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Goddard, hardly provided a sound basis for objectivity. And so it proved. "Surely it is for the learned judge to decide what he is going to lay before the jury, and so long as it is done, fairly and squarely, that is sufficient."
The conviction stood, as did the sentence, death. Yet, as has now been acknowledged by yesterday's coruscating judgment, Lord Goddard's summing up at the original trial was a travesty. He spoke for 45 minutes, yet only two sentences of his speech referred to Bentley's defence, and even those were in disparaging tones.
However, the case of Craig and Bentley has been kept alive not through any understanding of the legal niceties of the case, but simply on the basis of natural justice. It was the same gut reaction that led ordinary people in their thousands to petition the then Home Secretary, David Maxwell-Fyfe, to grant Bentley a reprieve: if Craig who had shot the policeman was to live, then it was inhuman to allow the by stander Bentley to die.
Bentley's joint guilt rested on the proposition that he had shouted encouragement to Craig, with the now infamous words: "Let him have it, Chris." Much has been made of the ambiguity of this phrase. Pundits of the day opined that it simply meant "Hand over the gun".
By the standards of late 20thcentury justice, the conduct of the trial was appalling. It took place only three weeks after the crime, and ran only two days. Evidence regarding Bentley's mental age or his epilepsy was not provided to the jury. Eye-witnesses to the rooftop shoot-out were not called. The only witnesses were the police.
For 15 years the Bentley parents were not allowed to visit their son's grave. The wreaths which they delivered every year on the anniversary of his death were destroyed by order of the Home Office. Only in 1968 did the then Labour Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, allow Bentley's remains to be disinterred from Wandsworth Prison and given a Christian burial.
On the death of Bentley's father, the campaign to clear his name was continued by his sister, Iris. Only 18 months older than her brother, she had shouldered responsibility for him from an early age. What drew people towards her cause - those professionals without whose involvement nothing would have happened - was her lack of bitterness, certainly in relation to Craig.
Her view of politicians, however, was less generous. They were the villains of the piece, from Winston Churchill, whose decision to use the case to underline the Government's hardline attitude to law and order was the engine that kept the wheels of the law turning along the route he had ordained; to the roster of Home Secretaries who have thwarted every attempt to clear her brother's name, including an opportunity five years ago when, as the result of a judicial review, the Home Secretary, Mr Michael Howard, was obliged to proffer a pardon of sorts, a belated acknowledgment that Bentley should not have hanged. But the conviction still stood.
Although much new evidence has been accumulated over the past few years - eye-witness evidence on the roof, psychological evidence, linguistic evidence to show that Bentley's police statement was a complete fabrication - this was seen as secondary by yesterday's appeal judges. The decision to quash the judgment was made solely on the basis of the evidence of the trial, which was available when Bentley was still alive.
As recently as 1992, when the Home Secretary, Mr Kenneth Clarke - himself a trained barrister - turned down the family's request for a free pardon ("I have reluctantly concluded that there are no grounds . . ."), the Police Federation made it clear that any attempt to point the finger at their members - even at the distance of 40 years - would not go down well. Faced with the choice of police anger or the pain of one working-class family, Home Secretary after Home Secretary has taken the pragmatic way out.
It was only after the establishment last year of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, a body completely independent of the Home Office, that the case could be looked at without any hidden political agenda and referred it once again to the Court of Appeal.
Much has yet to come out. But now that the doors have finally been prised open, it will. Sadly, Iris Bentley died 18 months ago: however, she already knew that "Derek's case" as she called it was the first listed for assessment by the new body, and had complete faith in the law to vindicate the belief in her brother's innocence that had consumed her life.