Try, try and try again

Saturday, 3rd August 2002

Retrials should be possible, Sir William Macpherson tells Boris Johnson, but not, as things stand, for the killers of Stephen Lawrence

Yeah, I said. Too right, I said; and in my delight at hearing this strong defence of liberty, I started going the wrong way up a one-way street. It's all because of that Lawrence report, I told her. An 800-year-old freedom, I cried, snuffed out because of Sir William Macpherson and his inquiry into the killing of Stephen Lawrence. Oh really? said my wife, who believes in restraining anything that threatens to become a right-wing rant. Yup, I said, and I dug it out. Here it is.

According to paragraph 4.3 of the Home Secretary's White Paper Justice for All, entitled 'Double Jeopardy', the Stephen Lawrence report is cited as a sole and sufficient reason for the change. 'The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report recognised that the rule is capable of causing grave injustice to victims and the community in certain cases where compelling fresh evidence has come to light after an acquittal.' And, according to paragraph 4.66, the law will be retrospective: that is to say, it will apply to acquittals which have already taken place.

The implication of the White Paper could not be clearer. We are going to revisit that dark, dank road in Eltham where Stephen Lawrence was stabbed twice by a group of five or six white youths on 22 April 1993, and had two axillary arteries severed. We are going to hunt down the youths, a couple of whom have just been imprisoned for another racist offence, and we are going to make them pay. This time, the police will not be allowed to make a hash of it. There will be no mistakes. That is certainly how the press has interpreted the change. According to the Independent, Mr Blunkett's move has 'opened the way for possible retrials in high-profile cases such as the murder of Stephen Lawrence'.

And yet the more I thought about the Lawrence case, and double jeopardy, the more puzzled I was. Surely the whole point of that botched prosecution was that the police evidence was hopeless. The police dithered and dickered around and failed to lift floorboards, and when they finally did bring three of the suspects to trial, the case ignominiously collapsed. No one has come forward with new evidence, and it is hard to see how any more could credibly be produced, so long after the event.