Derek Bentley case

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.

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 under the English law principle of 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 in large part on the prosecution's interpretation of the ambiguous phrase "Let him have it", Bentley's alleged exhortation to Craig, which prosecutors argued was an order to shoot and defence counsel argued was an order to surrender; this after Lord Chief Justice Goddard. had described Bentley as "mentally aiding" the murder.

Derek Bentley entered Norbury Manor Secondary Modern School in 1944, after failing the eleven-plus examination.

Just before leaving, in March 1948, he and another boy were arrested for theft.

Six months later, Bentley was sentenced to serve three years at Kingswood Approved School near Bristol.

Christopher Craig also attended the same Secondary Modern school.

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.

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.

Bentley was sent to Kingswood Training School, Bristol, on 27 October 1948.

There he was administered diagnostic tests which eventually determined, when he was 15 1⁄2 years old, that his mental age was estimated at ten years, four months, while he had scored 66 on an IQ test.

Kingswood staff reported Bentley 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".

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 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.

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.

Bentley 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".

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.

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.

At around 9:15pm, 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 Frederick Fairfax, climbed the drainpipe to the roof and grabbed hold of Bentley, but Bentley broke free.

(Subsequently the Homicide Act 1957, which introduced stronger "diminished responsibility" safeguards, was all but certainly influenced by the Bentley trial.)

The Bentley case became a cause célèbre and led to a 40-year-long campaign to win 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.

Bentley's 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.