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- Police and press blamed as jailed sisters are freed
HEATHER MILLS, Home Affairs Correspondent
THE POLICE and the press were yesterday blamed for the latest
miscarriage of justice, which saw two sisters wrongly jailed for
life for the murder of a bank clerk, Alison Shaughnessy. Freeing
Michelle and Lisa Taylor, who had served nearly two years in jail,
the Court of Appeal said police had deliberately concealed evidence
that might have proven their innocence.
And in an unprecedented ruling, Lord Justice McCowan said the
convictions were also "unsafe and unsatisfactory" because
sensational and inaccurate media coverage had created a "real
risk of prejudice" to their trial.
The judge said: "The press is no more entitled to assume
guilt in what it writes in the course of a trial than a police
officer is entitled to convince himself than a defendant is guilty
and suppress evidence the emergence of which he fears might lead
to the defendant's acquittal."
He ordered documentation in the case to be sent to the Attorney
General to consider if any of the media — television, tabloid
and quality newspapers including the Independent — should
face contempt proceedings.
Yesterday after a tearful reunion with her parents, Michelle Taylor
said in a statement: "We have spent two years of our lives
protesting our innocence. Only now the deliberate mistake of the
police has come to light."
Lord Justice McCowan said officers had not alerted anyone to the
fact that a witness whose evidence "went to the core"
of the convictions had changed his story. Nor did they reveal
that the same witness had also sought a reward offered by Mrs
Shaughnessy's employers.
Some of the documents came to light only days before yesterday's
appeal was to start. One showed that Dr Michael Unsworth-White,
the only witness to place the two sisters at the scene of the
murder, had originally said that one of the women might have been
black.
The judge stressed that prosecution counsel had no idea such information
existed. Detective Superintendent Chris Burke, in charge of the
case, "did know of the existence of the document.... We can
only conclude he did not disclose it to the prosecution team because
he knew that if he did, in accordance with the Bar's high tradition,
they would in turn disclose it to the defence."
Mrs Shaughnessy, 21, died from 54 stab wounds after being attacked
at her home in Vardens Road, Battersea, south London, in June
1991. The two sisters were convicted 11 months later after the
prosecution alleged Michelle, who had once had an affair with
Mrs Shaughnessy's husband, John, was motivated by jealousy and
helped by her sister.
That affair was seized on by the media. Lord Justice McCowan said
he saw no reason to dissent from an earlier court's view that
coverage was "unremitting, extensive, sensational, inaccurate
and misleading".
A number of national newspapers froze stills from a video of Mr
and Mrs Shaughnessy's wedding, which was not part of the evidence,
so that what was clearly — on the video — a peck on
the cheek between Michelle and Mr Shaughnessy appeared to be a
mouth-to-mouth kiss.
However, the Sun said in a statement: "If Press coverage
of the trial was so terrible ... why didn't the Attorney General
act either during or after the trial? . . Justice would be better
served if there were fewer judges from Brasenose College, Oxford,
and more Sun readers from the University of Life on the bench."
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