| Swansea Crown Court | |
|---|---|
 Swansea Crown Court | |
| Location | St Helen's Road, Swansea |
| Coordinates | 51°36′52″N3°57′27″W / 51.6145°N 3.9576°W |
| Built | 1988 |
| Architect | Sir Alex Gordon |
| Architectural style(s) | Neoclassical style |
  Shown in Swansea | |
Swansea Crown Court is a Crown Court venue which deals with criminal cases at St Helen's Road in Swansea, Wales.
Until the late 1980s, judicial hearings in Swansea were held in the west wing of Swansea Guildhall. [1] However, as the number of court cases in southwest Wales grew, it became necessary to commission a dedicated courthouse for criminal matters. The site chosen, which was close to the guildhall but on the opposite side of St Helen's Road, had been occupied by an old tramway depot. [2]
The new building was designed by the Welsh architect Sir Alex Gordon in the neoclassical style, built in concrete at a cost of £5.2 million, and was completed in 1988. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of eleven bays facing onto St Helen's Road. The central bay featured a wide opening on the ground floor and a prominent bipartite oriel window on the first floor which was enhanced by a carved Royal coat of arms placed between the two parts. [8] The central bay was flanked by two full-height triangular piers. Internally, the building was laid out to accommodate three courtrooms. [9] The custodial area was extensively refurbished at a cost of £220,000 in August 2013. [10]
Notable cases have included the trial and wrongful conviction, now recognised as a serious miscarriage of justice, of Yusef Abdullahi, Stephen Miller and Tony Paris, in November 1990, for the murder of Lynette White. [11] [12] [13] Other cases have also included the trial and conviction of Jason Richards and Ben Hope, in February 2013, for the murder of Aamir Siddiqi, [14] and the trial and conviction of an unnamed man, in October 2019, on 36 counts of rape and one count of an assault by penetration against his own daughters. [15] [16] [17]
Not proven is a verdict available to a court of law in Scotland. Under Scots law, a criminal trial may end in one of three verdicts, one of conviction ("guilty") and two of acquittal.
The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven were two groups of people, mostly Irish, who were wrongly convicted in English courts in 1975 and 1976 for the Guildford pub bombings of 5 October 1974, and the Woolwich pub bombing of 7 November 1974. All the convictions were eventually quashed after long campaigns for justice, and the cases, along with those of the Birmingham Six, diminished public confidence in the integrity of the English criminal justice system.
A miscarriage of justice occurs when an unfair outcome occurs in a criminal or civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. Innocent people have sometimes ended up in prison for years before their conviction has eventually been overturned. They may be exonerated if new evidence comes to light or it is determined that the police or prosecutor committed some kind of misconduct at the original trial. In some jurisdictions this leads to the payment of compensation.
Barry Michael George is an English man who was found guilty of the murder of English television presenter Jill Dando and whose conviction was overturned on appeal.
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David Harold Eastman is a former public servant from Canberra, Australia. In 1995, he was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Colin Winchester and was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. A 2014 judicial inquiry recommended the sentence be quashed and he should be pardoned. On 22 August of the same year, the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory quashed the conviction, released Eastman from prison, and ordered a retrial.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is the statutory body responsible for investigating alleged miscarriages of justice in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It was established by Section 8 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 and began work on 31 March 1997. The commission is the only body in its area of jurisdiction with the power to send a case back to an appeals court if it concludes that there is a real possibility that the court will overturn a conviction or reduce a sentence. Since starting work in 1997, it has on average referred 33 cases a year for appeal.
The Guildhall is one of the main office buildings of the City and County of Swansea Council. The Guildhall complex, which includes the City Hall, Brangwyn Hall and the County Law Courts for Swansea, is a Grade I listed building.
The World's End Murders is the colloquial name given to the murder of two girls, Christine Eadie, 17, and Helen Scott, 17, in Edinburgh, in October 1977. The case is so named because both victims were last seen alive leaving The World's End pub in Edinburgh's Old Town. The only person to stand trial accused of the murders, Angus Robertson Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 in controversial circumstances. Following the amendment of the law of double jeopardy, which would have prevented his retrial, Sinclair was retried in October 2014 and convicted of both murders on 14 November 2014. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 37 years, the longest sentence by a Scottish court, meaning he would have been 106 years old when he was eligible for a potential release on parole. He died at HM Prison Glenochil aged 73 on 11 March 2019. Coincidentally, he died on the same day the BBC's Crimewatch Roadshow programme profiled the murders.
Newport Crown Court is a Crown Court venue which deals with criminal cases at Faulkner Road in Newport in South Wales.
Lynette Deborah White was murdered on 14 February 1988 in Cardiff, Wales. South Wales Police issued a photofit image of a bloodstained, white male seen in the vicinity at the time of the murder but were unable to trace the man. In November 1988, the police charged five men with White's murder, although none of the scientific evidence discovered at the crime scene could be linked to them. In November 1990, following what was then the longest murder trial in British history, three of the men were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Preston Crown Court, or more properly the Crown Court at Preston, is a criminal court on the Ring Way in Preston, Lancashire, England. The court is based on two sites in the city; Preston Combined Court Centre on Ringway and Sessions House on Lancaster Road. As a first tier court centre, the court deals with all types of cases that are heard in the Crown Court as well as being a trial centre for civil High Court cases; it is also a venue for the County Court where smaller civil cases and family cases are dealt with.
Aamir Siddiqi was a boy from Cardiff, South Wales. In April 2010, at the age of 17, Siddiqi was killed in his family's home in the Roath area of Cardiff. On 1 February 2013 Jason Richards, 38, and Ben Hope, 39, were convicted of his murder; they had intended to kill a different man. Later that month they were both sentenced to life imprisonment, and ordered to serve a minimum of 40 years.
Ipswich Crown Court is a Crown Court venue which deals with criminal cases at Russell Road, Ipswich, England. It was completed in 2004.
In October 2019, a 78-year-old man from South Wales was sentenced for 33 years for serious sexual offences against three of his daughters, spanning 20 years, one of whom was also his granddaughter. He frequently raped his daughters from the ages of 12, 13, or 14, fathering six of his own grandchildren with one. He also arranged for other men to rape his daughters.
Libby Squire was a university student who disappeared following a night out with friends on 31 January 2019 in Kingston upon Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. In the days following her disappearance, Humberside Police and Squire's parents made a public appeal for information. Police undertook door-to-door enquiries in areas of Hull near to where Squire lived and had last been seen, as well as searching bins, drains and the partially frozen Beverley and Barmston Drain for evidence.
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Plymouth Law Courts, also known as Plymouth Combined Court Centre, is a Crown Court venue which deals with criminal cases, as well as a County Court, which deals with civil cases, in Armada Way, Plymouth, England. The building is located just to the east of Plymouth Civic Centre and just to the south of Plymouth Guildhall.