DPP invites Ratcliffe defence team to appeal convictions
19 April 2011
Followers of the fall-out of the Ratcliffe on Soar affair will remember our post on the collapse on one of the prosecutions after the revelation of activities by an undercover police officer.
We speculated then whether we would ever know whether PC Kennedy’s conduct may have rendered the evidence obtained unfair. Now it seems we have the answer: the DPP has written to the representatives of the twenty protestors who were actually convicted of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass to lodge an appeal against their conviction in December last year.
The undercover police officer was one of the hundred-odd suspects arrested at the Iona School in Nottingham on Easter Monday, 2009. He had apparently been involved in the conspiracy from the beginning, and his recordings of the briefings to the protesters were withheld from the CPS by the police, which led to one of the prosecutions being dropped.
Shortly following the conviction of the “Ratcliffe 20”, Keir Starmer instructed Clare Montgomery QC to review the safety of the conviction in the light of the non-disclosure of material relating to the activities of PC Kennedy. She has now completed the review and has recommended that the Court of Appeal consider the matter.
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