Derek Bentley case

In the 2013 novel The Late Scholar by Jill Paton Walsh, the character Peter Wimsey notes that the Bentley case has reduced the support for capital punishment.

Eventually, on 30 July 1998, the Court of Appeal quashed Bentley's conviction for murder. However, Bentley's sister Iris had died of cancer the year before. Her daughter, Maria Bentley-Dingwall, who was born 10 years after Derek Bentley's execution, continued the campaign after her mother's death.

In a case with similarities to the Bentley case, a House of Lords judgment of 17 July 1997 cleared Philip English of murdering Sergeant Bill Forth in March 1993, the reasons being given by Lord Hutton. English had been handcuffed before his companion Paul Weddle killed Sgt Forth with a concealed knife. The existing joint enterprise law allowed the conviction of English for murder because they had both been attacking Sgt Forth with wooden staves, making English an accessory to any murder committed by Weddle as part of that assault. Lord Hutton made the 'fine distinction' that a concealed knife was a far more deadly weapon than a wooden stave, so that proof of English's knowledge of it was necessary for conviction. The appeal may have influenced the allowing of a posthumous referral of the Bentley case.

The Bentley case became a cause célèbre, and led to a 45-year-long campaign to win Derek Bentley a posthumous pardon, which was granted in 1993, and then a further campaign for the quashing of his murder conviction, which occurred in 1998. His case is thus considered a case of miscarriage of justice alongside that of Timothy Evans, and pivotal in the successful campaign to abolish capital punishment in the United Kingdom.

On 29 July 1993, Bentley was granted a royal pardon in respect of the sentence of death passed upon him and carried out. However, in English law this did not quash his conviction for murder.

The 1991 feature film Let Him Have It, starring Christopher Eccleston as Bentley and Paul Reynolds as Craig, relates the story, 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).

The 1990 book Let Him Have It, Chris written by M J Trow explores the inconsistencies in the police version of events.

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.

In his 1971 book To Encourage the Others (the title is an acknowledged allusion to Voltaire's Candide), David Yallop documented Bentley's psychiatric problems, as well as what he believed were inconsistencies in the police and forensic evidence and the conduct of the trial. Despite Craig's gun being the only one on the roof at the moment that Miles was shot, he proposed the theory that Miles was actually killed by a bullet from a gun other than Craig's sawn-off .455 revolver. Yallop drew this conclusion from an interview in March 1971 with David Haler, the pathologist who carried out the autopsy on Miles, who Yallop reports estimated the head wound was inflicted by a bullet of between .32 and .38 calibre fired from between six and nine feet away. Craig had been firing from a distance of just under 40 feet and had used a variety of undersized .41, and .45 calibre rounds in his revolver; Yallop asserted it would have been impossible for him to use a bullet of .38 or smaller calibre. Haler did not offer in his trial evidence any estimate of the size of the bullet that had killed Miles. In July 1970, during an interview with Yallop, Craig accepted that the bullet that killed Miles came from his gun, but maintained that all of his shots were fired over the rear garden of a house adjacent to the warehouse, approximately 20 degrees to the right of Miles's location from where Craig had been firing.

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 Wandsworth Prison and reburied in a family grave. In August 1970, Lord Goddard told Yallop that he thought Bentley was going to be reprieved, said he should have been, and attacked David Maxwell Fyfe for allowing the execution to go ahead.

In March 1966, Bentley's remains were removed from Wandsworth and re-interred in Croydon Cemetery.

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". Maxwell Fyfe, in the words of the letter sent out, failed to discover any sufficient ground to justify him in advising Her Majesty to interfere in the due course of the law.

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 sentenced to death whilst Craig was ordered to be detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure. He was eventually released in May 1963 after serving 10 years' imprisonment, married two years later and subsequently became a plumber.

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 psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital. Hill's report stated that Bentley was illiterate and of low intelligence, almost borderline retarded. However, Matheson was of the opinion that whilst agreeing that Bentley was of low intelligence, he did not have epilepsy at the time of the alleged offence and he was not a "feeble-minded person" under the Mental Deficiency Acts. Matheson said that he was sane and fit to plead and stand trial. English law at the time did not recognise the concept of diminished responsibility due to retarded development, though it existed in Scottish law (it was introduced to England by the Homicide Act 1957). Criminal insanity – where the accused is unable to distinguish right from wrong – was then the only medical defence to murder. Bentley, while he had a severe debilitation, was not insane.

At 9am on 28 January 1953, Bentley was hanged at Wandsworth Prison, London, by Albert Pierrepoint, with Harry Allen assisting. There were protests outside the prison and two people were arrested and fined for damage to property.

He was discovered to still be "quite illiterate" at the time of his arrest in November 1952. The prison medical officer said he "cannot even recognise or write down all the letters of the alphabet".

On the night of Sunday 2 November 1952 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.

Both Craig and Bentley were charged with the murder of PC Miles on 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.

Bentley was originally scheduled to be hanged on 30 December 1952 but this was postponed to allow for an appeal. Bentley's lawyers filed appeals highlighting the ambiguities of the ballistic evidence, Bentley's mental age and the fact that he did not fire the fatal shot. Bentley's appeal was heard on 13 January 1953 and was unsuccessful.

Bentley was released from Kingswood school on 28 July 1950, a year early, though he remained 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.

Bentley was examined twice by EEG: a reading on 16 November 1949 indicated he was an epileptic and a reading on 9 February 1950 was "abnormal". Both were taken at the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol.

Bentley was sent to Kingswood Training School, Bristol on 27 October 1948. They administered diagnostic tests on him during the time of his detention there. In December 1948 (when he was .mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}15+1⁄2 years old), his mental age was estimated at 10 years, 4 months, when he scored 66 on an IQ test. Kingswood staff reported him to be "lazy, indifferent, voluble and of the 'wise guy' type", whilst a court described him as "indifferent, smug, self-satisfied and ready to tell tales". After his arrest in November 1952, further IQ tests were administered to him at Brixton Prison. He was described there as "borderline feeble-minded", with a verbal score of 71, a performance IQ of 87 and a full scale IQ of 77.

Derek Bentley entered Norbury Manor Secondary Modern School in 1944, after failing the eleven-plus examination. Just before leaving, in March 1948, Bentley and another boy were arrested for theft. Six months later, he was sentenced to serve three years at Kingswood Approved School, near Bristol. Christopher Craig also attended the same Secondary Modern school.

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.

Derek William Bentley (30 June 1933 – 28 January 1953) was a British man who was hanged for the murder of a policeman during a burglary attempt. Christopher Craig, then aged 16, a friend and accomplice of Bentley, was accused of the murder. Bentley was convicted as a party to the crime, by the English law principle of common purpose, "joint enterprise", as the burglary had been committed in mutual understanding and bringing deadly weapons. The outcome of the trial, and Home Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe's failure to grant clemency to Bentley, were highly controversial.

The jury at the trial found Bentley guilty based on the prosecution's interpretation of the ambiguous phrase "Let him have it" (Bentley's alleged exhortation to Craig) after the judge, Lord Chief Justice Goddard, had described Bentley as "mentally aiding the murder of Sidney Miles". Goddard sentenced Bentley to be hanged, despite a recommendation for mercy by the jury: Under the Judgment of Death Act 1823, no other sentence was possible (subsequently the Homicide Act 1957, which introduced stronger "diminished responsibility" safeguards, was all but certainly influenced by the Bentley trial).