Christopher Craig was 16 years old when a jury at the Central Criminal Court in London convicted him, on December 11, 1952, of the murder of Police Constable Sidney Miles of the Metropolitan Police. The officer died on duty in Croydon, south of London, on the night of Sunday, November 2, 1952. Craig stood in the dock beside Derek Bentley, a 19-year-old who was already in police custody when the officer died, and the same jury convicted both of them of murder. The law forbade a death sentence on anyone under 18, so Craig was ordered to be detained during Her Majesty's pleasure. Bentley was over that age. He was sentenced to death, and although the jury recommended him to mercy, he was executed in London on January 28, 1953.
The two verdicts led to very different ends. Craig served about ten years and was released in 1963. Bentley's case passed through the Court of Criminal Appeal, the Home Secretary's refusal of clemency, a parliamentary row the night before his execution, police inquiries ordered by Home Secretaries in 1972 and 1991, a royal pardon on sentence in 1993 and, on July 30, 1998, a judgment of the Court of Appeal quashing his conviction for murder. Craig's own conviction for the murder of the officer was never appealed and never disturbed. Yet every stage of the long argument over Bentley's guilt came back, in the end, to what Craig had done that night, to what he was said to have heard, and to the way one judge had put the two young men's cases to one jury.
Craig and Bentley were two young men from south London, three years apart in age, with Craig the younger. They were together in Croydon on the evening of November 2, 1952, when officers of the Metropolitan Police were called to the place where they were. Within a short time one officer had been injured, and the officer who had come to his colleagues' aid was dead.
Bentley had been taken into custody by one of the first officers to arrive, before the officer was killed. The interval between Bentley's detention and the death, put at about 15 to 20 minutes in later parliamentary argument, became one of the central facts of everything that followed, because it meant that Bentley was in police hands when the officer died. Craig was taken into custody in Croydon the same night. Both young men were charged with the murder of the officer.
The Metropolitan Police took statements from the officers who had been present and from the other witnesses that night and in the days that followed, and those statements formed the Crown's case at the Central Criminal Court. Two detectives later gave evidence at the trial that Craig had made remarks incriminating himself within about an hour of the officer's death. Bentley, who could not write, made a statement at the police station that was taken down by an officer and signed by him. It came before the jury as his own words, and in 1998 its wording became one of the matters on which the Court of Appeal received fresh expert evidence.
Before the trial a medical officer examined Bentley and found that he was sane and fit to plead and to stand trial. Other information about his mental health was not disclosed at the trial.
Twenty years later, when the case was challenged on the ground that the officer had died at police hands, the Home Office returned to the original investigation file and concluded in May 1972 that the statements taken in 1952 contradicted that theory.
The two defendants were tried together at the Central Criminal Court in December 1952. The Lord Chief Justice of England presided. The hearing lasted three days.
Both faced the same count of murder, but the Crown's case against each was different in kind. Against Craig, the case was that his own act had caused the officer's death. Against Bentley, who had injured no one, the case rested on joint enterprise: that the two had set out together on an unlawful purpose prepared to resist arrest by violence if necessary, that Bentley knew what Craig was carrying, and that he was still a party to that purpose when the officer died, so that in law he shared the guilt.
The joint enterprise turned on a few words. Several officers testified that Bentley had called out "Let him have it, Chris!" before the first officer was injured. The prosecution read the words as an incitement. The defense argued that, if they were spoken at all, they could as easily have meant that Craig should hand over what he held and give himself up. Both defendants denied that Bentley had said them.
Bentley's own statements also came before the jury. In one he said that he had known what Craig was carrying but did not think he would use it; at the police station he said that he had not known Craig was going to use it. The Crown relied on the second statement to show that Bentley had known what Craig was carrying. The Lord Chief Justice directed the jury that they had to consider whether the two young men had gone out together to resist arrest, "even by violence, if necessary." In summing up he first left part of one officer's evidence out of his review of the case and added it only after defense counsel pointed out the omission.
On December 11, 1952, after about 75 minutes of deliberation, the jury convicted both defendants of murder. They added a recommendation to mercy for Bentley.
For Craig there was only one sentence the court could pass. Under section 53(1) of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, sentence of death could not be pronounced on or recorded against a person under 18. The court had instead to order that he be detained during the sovereign's pleasure, a sentence with no term in years and no release date. Queen Elizabeth II had come to the throne in February 1952, and Craig was ordered to be detained during Her Majesty's pleasure.
Bentley was sentenced to death. In 1952 a conviction for murder carried that sentence for an adult, and the jury's recommendation passed to the Home Secretary with the papers.
Bentley appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal, which considered and dismissed his appeal against conviction and found nothing to criticize in the summing up. Craig was not part of that appeal, and his own conviction and sentence were never taken to the appeal courts. Bentley's last hope lay in the royal prerogative of mercy, which the Crown exercised on the Home Secretary's advice.
On January 26, 1953, the Home Secretary announced that he had found insufficient reasons to advise the exercise of clemency. That evening a group of members of Parliament tabled a motion asking him to reconsider in view of the jury's recommendation. About 50 members signed it before it was taken off the Order Paper.
On January 27 the Speaker ruled that the House could not debate a capital sentence while it was still pending, and refused leave to move the adjournment over the ruling. Bentley was executed the next day.
Craig began his indefinite detention at 16. The order fixed no date for his release. He remained in custody for about ten years and was released in 1963.
The case came back to Parliament in 1971 and 1972, after a book and a television film argued for an inquiry into Bentley's conviction. At the Home Secretary's request the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis made further inquiries into each point on which new or different evidence was claimed. The pathologist who had given evidence at the trial and the officer who had first detained Bentley each gave fresh statements and stood by their trial evidence, and a man who came forward as a witness gave an account that checks found inconsistent with the other evidence. The Home Office found nothing to justify action on the conviction or a wider inquiry. On June 14, 1972, the House of Lords debated the case, and no inquiry followed.
A second review began in 1991. The Metropolitan Police interviewed people said to be able to shed new light on the case, among them officers who had been present that night, and sent reports to the Home Office in October and December 1991. On October 1, 1992, the Home Office published a memorandum explaining its decision that there were no grounds for recommending a posthumous free pardon. The decision was taken to the Divisional Court of the High Court, and in 1993 Bentley received a royal pardon in respect of the sentence. The pardon left the conviction for murder in place.
By then a new route had opened. The Criminal Cases Review Commission, the independent body set up to investigate possible miscarriages of justice and send them back to the appeal courts, received an application to review Bentley's conviction in April 1997. Its investigation found that the trial, and above all the summing up, had not adequately considered whether any joint enterprise was still in being when the officer died, or whether Bentley had withdrawn from it. The Commission found that the summing up lacked the clarity and precision the law and the case required, especially in its directions on the burden and standard of proof. It also found that information about Bentley's mental health had not been disclosed at trial, and it obtained new psychiatric evidence bearing on how his statements to the police and his demeanor in the witness box should be read, both of them key issues at the trial. The Commission referred the conviction to the Court of Appeal in November 1997.
The appeal was heard by three judges of the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, presided over by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. The court applied the substantive law of murder and joint enterprise as it stood in 1952, not the law of 1998, and examined the evidence that had been before the jury. It admitted a limited body of fresh evidence. Expert opinion on Bentley's statement, the one the Crown had used to show that he knew what Craig carried, found that its language did not fit other samples of his speech.
The court's main findings concerned the summing up. It held that the jury had not been reminded that the Crown had to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, and that the directions could have left the jury with the impression that Bentley had to satisfy them of his innocence. It found the summing up unbalanced in its treatment of the police witnesses and of both defendants.
On July 30, 1998, the court quashed Bentley's conviction for murder as unsafe. The judgment is cited as R v Derek William Bentley (Deceased), [2001] 1 Cr App R 21. The decision concerned Bentley alone. Craig's conviction for the murder of the officer stood untouched; his case had never been referred, and the court's findings about the summing up were made on Bentley's appeal.
Craig made a public statement after the ruling. He said that not a day went by when he did not think about Bentley.
The words "Let him have it, Chris!" were never accepted by either defendant. Police officers gave evidence that Bentley said them; Bentley and Craig denied it at trial. What the words meant, if they were spoken, was central to Bentley's conviction and to every later review of it.
The theory that the officer died at police hands was examined by the Metropolitan Police at the Home Secretary's request and rejected in 1972, when the Home Secretary told the Commons that the available evidence contradicted it.
Bentley's mental capacity, his medical history and the conduct of his trial were argued over for 45 years and were among the grounds on which the Commission referred his case. None of those questions touched Craig's own conviction, which was not appealed and has never been set aside.
February 1952: Queen Elizabeth II comes to the throne.
November 2, 1952: The officer dies on duty in Croydon; Christopher Craig, 16, and Derek Bentley, 19, are taken into custody and charged with his murder.
December 1952: Craig and Bentley are tried together at the Central Criminal Court before the Lord Chief Justice.
December 11, 1952: Both are convicted of murder; the jury recommends mercy for Bentley. Craig is ordered to be detained during Her Majesty's pleasure; Bentley is sentenced to death.
January 26, 1953: The Home Secretary declines to advise clemency.
January 27, 1953: The Speaker rules that the Commons cannot debate a pending capital sentence.
January 28, 1953: Bentley is executed in London.
1963: Craig is released.
November 1971: A book on the case is under study at the Home Office.
May 25, 1972: The Home Secretary finds no grounds for action on Bentley's conviction.
June 14, 1972: The House of Lords debates the case; no inquiry follows.
August 1991: The Home Office asks the Metropolitan Police to look into matters raised in a television program.
October and December 1991: Police reports go to the Home Office.
October 1, 1992: The Home Office publishes its reasons for refusing a posthumous free pardon.
July 1993: The Home Secretary considers a judgment of the Divisional Court on the refusal.
1993: Bentley receives a royal pardon in respect of the sentence; the conviction stands.
April 1997: The Criminal Cases Review Commission receives an application.
November 1997: The Commission refers Bentley's conviction to the Court of Appeal.
July 30, 1998: The Court of Appeal quashes Bentley's conviction for murder.