Latest news with #JaniceCartwrightGilbert
BBC News
30-07-2025
- BBC News
Man has conviction for Wilden murder quashed for second time
A man who was twice found guilty of a woman's murder has had his conviction quashed for a second time at the Court of Plummer was jailed in 1998 after a jury found he had fatally attacked Janice Cartwright-Gilbert at the building site of her future home near Wilden, Bedfordshire, the previous Cartwright-Gilbert, 38, was stabbed with a knife and scissors before her body was set alight in a caravan next to the building Plummer, who was 24 at the time of her death, had his first murder conviction quashed in 2021, but was convicted again following a retrial at Aylesbury Crown Court in 2023 and sentenced to life with a minimum term of 16 years. Mr Plummer's barristers challenged his second conviction at the Court of Appeal earlier this month, claiming the trial judge was wrong to allow hearsay evidence to be presented to the jury from a police informant, Christopher had shared a cell with Mr Plummer before his first conviction and claimed he had confessed to the murder, but the "cell confession" was not used in the first trial, and Dunne died in a ruling on Wednesday, three senior judges quashed Mr Plummer's second conviction, stating that Dunne's claims "should have been withdrawn from the jury". Lord Justice Edis, sitting with Mrs Justice McGowan and Judge Nigel Lickley KC, said: "Dunne was a criminal and paid police informant who was in the habit of passing information to the police about other criminals for his own benefit."He continued: "The circumstances of the suggested confession to murder and the reliability of the informant are such as to raise concerns about it."He added: "He gave no detail of the murder which could support its reliability." Mr Plummer had his first murder conviction quashed after it was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission due to concerns over expert Plummer had admitted to burglary, but denied murder and that he had ever given a confession. Account discrepancies At a hearing on 15 July, Katy Thorne KC, for Mr Plummer, said that Dunne's evidence "should never have been admitted" and that the trial judge "failed to properly consider" the evidence had "inherent potential unreliability".She also said records showed a payment had been made to Dunne at the time he provided evidence to the police, but "there has never been any explanation given by anyone" for what it was did not ask to speak to police about the alleged confession until August 1997, and gave a differing account that Justice Edis said there were "discrepancies and matters that cannot in fact be correct" in Dunne's accounts, which also did not provide "any account of the killing".He continued the retrial "should have been stopped" after the jury had heard the evidence, and the judge's "failure to do that clearly therefore renders the conviction unsafe".The Crown Prosecution Service, which opposed the appeal, said: "Having carefully considered the judgement, it is not possible for the prosecution to seek a further retrial as the remaining evidence, without the cell confession, would not provide a realistic prospect of conviction." Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
The Guardian
30-07-2025
- The Guardian
Court quashes conviction of man twice found guilty of Bedfordshire murder
The court of appeal has quashed the conviction of a man who has spent 28 years in jail for a violent murder he has always claimed he was innocent of. Justin Plummer, aged 54, was convicted of the murder of 38-year-old Janice Cartwright-Gilbert in 1998, a year after she was fatally attacked at the building site of her future home near Wilden in Bedfordshire. Her body was found in a burning caravan with multiple stab wounds, a knife and scissors sticking out of her neck, having been throttled by an electrical flex. Plummer was a prolific burglar engaged in a robbing spree at the time, and had clocked up 24 convictions in the four months leading up to the murder. But none of the convictions involved violence. There was no DNA linking Plummer to the crime, no stolen items recovered, and no eyewitnesses placing him at the scene. The original conviction relied almost entirely on footwear mark evidence – an imprint on Cartwright-Gilbert's head alleged to match a size 6 Nike Air Screech trainer that Plummer wore. The case also partly hinged on the prosecution's argument that Plummer's brother, Adam, had discussed his sibling being a suspect with their mother before he had been arrested and therefore Plummer must have been guilty. The expert witness who provided the trainer evidence, David Lewin, was a dentist unqualified in footwear forensics. At the original trial, the judge said in summing up: 'It was one of the clearest marks he had ever seen. No other shoe could have caused it.' But Lewin's method (using imaging overlays) was later ruled 'neither validated nor suitable … even by late 1990s standards'. In 2021, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred Plummer's conviction back to the court of appeal on these grounds. In 2023, Plummer, who slept on the floor in prison to protest his innocence, had his conviction overturned. The court ruled that the expert evidence was unreliable and that the verdict was unsafe. But Plummer was never released. The appeal court's ruling was immediately challenged by the Crown Prosecution Service and Plummer was convicted again at a retrial in June 2023. This time the prosecution relied on an alleged confession made by Plummer to a now deceased former cellmate, Christopher Dunne. Dunne, who had schizophrenia, was a police informant and had not been cross-examined at the original trial. Plummer's legal team argued that the hearsay evidence was inherently flawed and unreliable. On Wednesday, in less than 10 minutes, the court of appeal quashed the 2023 conviction. The three judges ruled: 'We consider that this conviction is unsafe because the Dunne hearsay evidence should have been withdrawn from the jury even if, which we have not decided, it was properly admitted in the first place. For the reasons we have explained, the Adam Plummer evidence does not support the Dunne evidence, but rather gives rise to further serious concerns.' Plummer's solicitor, Annalisa Moscardini, said: 'Justin Plummer is finally vindicated for his 28-year fight against this murder conviction. Due to his refusal to accept his guilt for a crime he has always been clear he did not commit, he has served far longer than his minimum term of 16 years. Justin's determination and resilience has finally paid dividends and he will sleep tonight a free man, for the first time in 28 years.' His barrister, Katy Thorne KC, said: 'Permitting a dead cell confession witness in a trial on an allegation of this age was simply unfair. Prisoners have all sorts of motives to give false cell confession evidence and law reform is needed to stop such evidence being part of criminal trials. Now Justin is being released with little support from the state. The system has to be reformed to give proper support to such victims of miscarriage of justice.'
