Rough Justice (British TV programme)

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Rough Justice
Created byPeter Hill
Martin Young
Presented byMartin Young (1982-86)
David Jessel (1987-92)
John Ware (1993-97)
Kirsty Wark (1998-2007)
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Production
ProducersPeter Hill (1980-86)
Steve Haywood (1987-92)
Charles Hunter
Dinah Lord
Original release
Network BBC One/BBC Two
Release1982 (1982) –
2007 (2007)

Rough Justice is a British television programme that was broadcast on BBC, and which investigated alleged miscarriages of justice. It was broadcast between 1982 and 2007 and played a role in overturning the convictions of 18 people involved in 13 separate cases where miscarriages of justice had occurred. [1] [2] The programme was similar in aim and approach to The Court of Last Resort , the NBC programme that aired in the United States from 1957–58. It is credited with contributing to the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 1997. [3]

Contents

Rough Justice was cancelled in 2007 due to budget restraints, leading to criticism from the media as the announcement came just as the BBC launched an £18 million Gaelic-language channel which would serve only 86,000 viewers. [4]

Origins

The programme was devised and produced by Peter Hill, an investigative journalist, in 1979, motivated by Ludovic Kennedy's earlier television work in the same field and the work of Tom Sargant at reform group JUSTICE. [5] In 1992 Hill recalled: "At that time there were equally important programmes being made by John Willis at Yorkshire Television and Ray Fitzwater at Granada. We were all investigating mistakes made before a case comes to trial. That was the problem in the early eighties – the legacy of police misconduct from the seventies." [6]

During this period, criminal justice procedure in the United Kingdom was uncodified. Until the introduction of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), and the creation of the Crown Prosecution Service in 1986, the police "decided what evidence to disclose." [7] Following the introduction of PACE, David Jessel, a later reporter on the programme, acknowledged that the Act had "probably reduced police misconduct" but said that "the evidence of a plethora of post-PACE case papers is that the same old wickednesses continue, although in different guises. It is remarkable how many suspects these days "confess" in police cars on their way to PACE-protected police stations; and duty solicitors have tales to tell about the co-operation afforded them at some stations." [8]

Format

Each programme concentrated on a separate case where a miscarriage of justice was alleged to have taken place. The first, titled The Case of the Handful of Hair, was broadcast on BBC1 on 7 April 1982, and concerned a 1976 murder case. It was watched by 11 million viewers. [2]

In 1992, the original team took the format to Channel 4, under the title Trial and Error - this ran until 2000. However, Rough Justice continued with new personnel.

Controversy over campaigning for guilty man

In the programme's final episode in 2007, Rough Justice, then produced by high-profile activist Louise Shorter, wrongly campaigned for murderer Simon Hall, who later went on to formally confess to the murder he was convicted of and prove he was rightly convicted. [9] [10] [11] [12] The programme had followed students of Bristol University's Bristol Innocence Project (UoBIP) in promoting his false claims of innocence, and this helped his case get referred to the Court of Appeal in 2009 via the Criminal Cases Review Commission (which itself had partly been set up in 1997 due to the campaigns of the Rough Justice programme). [13] [11] [12] Hall's wife Stephanie, who he had married in prison in 2005, was convinced of his false claims of innocence, saying: "There was never a shadow of a doubt that they had the wrong guy, he didn't have it in him – he's too sensitive and kind." [13] She had met him through writing letters to him in prison, saying: "I’d always written to him in prison but then we started writing almost every day. We realised that the spark was real... we fell in love through our letters and phone calls and he started opening up." [13] For many years she ran a campaign called "Justice 4 Simon" in an attempt to free him from prison, and Hall regularly sent online messages to his supporters. [10] Friends and family of Hall also backed him, setting up a website to highlight what they believed were the "weaknesses in the prosecution case against him", and wrongly claiming that he had no motive for killing Albert, a friend of his mother's. [13] His campaign also won the backing of a number of MPs, and famous lawyer Michael Mansfield agreed to represent him legally and lead his campaign to be freed. [13] [14] [10] [15]

The UoBIP continued to assert he had been wrongly convicted even after his appeal was rejected in 2011. [16] [11] In 2013 Hall confessed to the crime to police and dropped his appeals, and one year later was found dead in an act of suicide. [10] [9] The confession led to outrage in the national media, with ITV News noting that he had confessed after a "decade of denial" and The Telegraph highlighting that his false campaign of innocence had cost the taxpayer £500,000. [17] [14] Thousands of hours of legal research had been wasted on attempting to clear Hall's name, including many hours of work conducted by unpaid volunteers of the University of Bristol Innocence Project. [18] Even shortly before he finally confessed, he had been complaining on the 'Justice4SimonHall' website that he was he was supposedly being stopped from returning to living in Ipswich where he had murdered his victim because her family did not want him to return to live near them. [10] Shortly after Hall confessed, the post and the campaign website itself was deleted. [10] In January earlier in the year the CCRC had also been examining a new claim by Hall that he was carrying out a burglary elsewhere on the day Mrs Albert's body was found, but Hall dropped this appeal after he finally admitted his guilt. [10] [18] Campaigner Ray Hollingsworth, who had claimed that he had gathered evidence that showed two other people were responsible for the murder, said: "If I'm wrong about this, I'm wrong. I will hold my hands up. I'm not going to hide from anyone. I believed in his innocence". [18]

Retired detective Roy Lambert, who led the original inquiry, said in response to the confession: "I've always been satisfied that he was responsible for killing Joan. Lots and lots of people were supporting him, MPs were supporting him and now he's deceived all of them because all along he's known that he's done it". [10] Suffolk Police released a statement saying: "Over the 10 years since Hall's conviction there have been a number of appeals and campaigns which have asserted that Simon Hall was wrongfully convicted of Mrs Albert's murder. These events and the related uncertainty have undoubtedly exacerbated the suffering Mrs Albert's family have had to endure since Joan was murdered. We sincerely hope that Simon Hall's admissions to having committed this brutal crime will in some way enable the family to move on with their lives." [10] [19] The family of victim Joan Albert, who had had to endure years of claims that Hall was innocent, released a statement saying: "During the last 10 years the publicity surrounding the appeals has been very distressing for our family, making moving on impossible, but we would like to thank Suffolk Police, including Roy Lambert and his team, who carried out the original investigation, to present day officers who continue to support us. We are also grateful to those who have helped us throughout this difficult ordeal". [17]

The Hall case was described as an embarrassment for 'miscarriage of justice' activists such as at Rough Justice, and an example of a case that they "quietly bury" as they do not wish to appear to have wrongly defended a guilty person. [20] It was said to have greatly undermined the claims of many prisoners who claim their innocence. [9] Responding to examples such as the Hall case, former Rough Justice producer and presenter David Jessel commented: "You always have to reserve a part of your brain for the possibility that the person you campaign for just might be guilty". [20] Louise Shorter continues to campaign against perceived 'miscarriages of justice' today. [9]

Cancellation

The programme was cancelled by the BBC in November 2007 as a cost-cutting measure. Marcel Berlins, writing in The Guardian , pointed out that the "effort and care which went into the programme's investigations" frequently "uncovered basic flaws in our system of investigating crime, exposed police incompetence and revealed the shortcomings of forensic science." It was this effort, Berlins believed, and the high financial cost that it entailed, that led to the BBC decision that "the crass value-for-money criterion was not being fulfilled. Yet Rough Justice is a perfect example of what public service broadcasting, which the BBC is supposed to espouse, is all about." [21]

Simon Ford, who had worked as the programme's executive producer, said: "For 27 years (sic), a programme like Rough Justice has proved that television, as well as reporting on injustice, can actually change things. Without a dedicated team doing that, many individuals who are wrongly imprisoned will stay there and the British public will remain ignorant of the failings of our justice system. This is a tragedy for the prisoners themselves and our greater society." [3] The BBC was also criticised for cancelling the programme while spending £18 million to launch a Gaelic-language channel "aimed at only 86,000, mainly Scottish, viewers, a population the size of Crawley, [ West Sussex ]." [4]

Programmes

Retrial by TV: The Rise and Fall of Rough Justice

As part of the BBC Four Justice Season focusing on the state of justice in Britain, a programme called Retrial by TV: The Rise and Fall of Rough Justice aired on 3 April 2011 and examined the creation of the programme, its relationship with the charity JUSTICE, and its troubled relations with the UK judiciary (as characterised by criticisms by law lords Denning and Lane), the police, the Home Office and the governors of the BBC.

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References

  1. ↑ "OU on the BBC: Justice: Timeshift – Retrial By Television". Open University . 3 April 2011. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
  2. 1 2 Produced: Steve O'Hagan. Narrated: Robert Murphy (April 2011). "The Rise and Fall of Rough Justice". Time Shift. Season 11. Episode 1. Bristol. BBC. BBC Four.
  3. 1 2 "BBC axes 'Rough Justice' after 27 years". BreakingNews.ie. Cork. 12 November 2007.
  4. 1 2 Martin, Nicole; Hope, Christopher (13 November 2007). "Rough Justice axed in BBC drive to save cash". The Daily Telegraph . London. p. 9.
  5. ↑ "A brief history of Rough Justice". Rough Justice. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
  6. ↑ Hill, Peter (24 November 1992). "TV justice: rough and unready". The Guardian . Manchester.
  7. ↑ Verkaik, Robert (1 June 1999). "Law: A whole decade in the dock". The Independent . London. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
  8. ↑ Jessel, David (1 December 1992). "Law: Why we need TV investigations". The Guardian . Manchester.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Campbell, Duncan (28 February 2017). "Rough justice: who is looking out for the wrongfully convicted? How internet sleuths - and secret courts - have changed the reporting of miscarriages of justice". New Statesman. Retrieved 24 September 2022.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Simon Hall confesses to Joan Albert murder 12 years on". BBC News. 8 August 2013. Retrieved 24 September 2022.
  11. 1 2 3 "UoBIP: Why the conviction of Simon Hall cannot stand". University of Bristol. University of Bristol Innocence Project. Retrieved 24 September 2022.
  12. 1 2 "BBC drops Rough Justice after 27 years". The Guardian. 12 November 2007. Retrieved 24 September 2022.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 "Capel St Mary: My Simon is innocent". Daily Gazette and Essex County Standard. 9 November 2009. Retrieved 24 September 2022.
  14. 1 2 "Killer admits murder 12 years on - costing taxpayers £500000". The Telegraph. 7 August 2013. Retrieved 24 August 2022.
  15. ↑ "Man confesses to woman's murder after decade trying to clear name". The Guardian. 8 August 2013. Retrieved 24 September 2022.
  16. ↑ "University of Bristol Innocence Project response to Simon Hall judgment by the Court of Appeal". University of Bristol News and Features. University of Bristol Innocence Project. Retrieved 24 September 2022.
  17. 1 2 "Suffolk killer Simon Hall admits guilt after a decade of denial". ITV News. 8 August 2013. Retrieved 24 September 2022.
  18. 1 2 3 "Joan Albert murder: Simon Hall supporters respond to confession". BBC News. 9 August 2013. Retrieved 25 September 2022.
  19. ↑ "Simon Hall admits he murdered 79-year-old Joan Albert despite decade campaigning for 'miscarriage of justice'". The Independent. 8 August 2013. Retrieved 24 September 2022.
  20. 1 2 "Who killed Jill Dando?". Nick Ross. April 2019. Retrieved 24 September 2022.
  21. ↑ Berlins, Marcel (12 November 2007). "Writ large: BBC's cost-cutters guilty of rough justice". The Guardian . London. p. 15.
  22. ↑ "Rough Justice man returns to jail". BBC News. 24 June 2009. Retrieved 19 August 2022.
  23. ↑ "Rachel Manning murder: Shahidul Ahmed found guilty". BBC News. 4 September 2013.
  24. ↑ "Rachel Manning murder trial: Jury told of sex assault". BBC News. 5 February 2013.
  25. ↑ "Simon Hall confesses to Joan Albert murder 12 years on". BBC News. 8 August 2013.
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