Miscarriage of Justice: Sue May articulates a catalogue of errors.

When you first meet Sue May, as I did at the Innocence Network UK Conference at Freshfields last November, she seems a completely unremarkable woman. Quietly spoken, northern accent, casually dressed, the sort of woman you would expect to have a history of family, home and traditional English community stability. The last thing you would expect is that she is a convicted murderer.

That is exactly what Sue May is, legally, to this day, a murderer who has served a sentence and been released. The fact that she has maintained her innocence at every single step of the way is just the first opening you receive into the life of what is a truly remarkable human being. Not remarkable because she has a great achievement to her name, not remarkable because she has attained a celebrity status on a desert island performing inane tasks for the benefits of television ratings, not remarkable because she is a convicted murderer but wholly remarkable because against the full force of the state, the police and the legal system this woman has stood firm and stands firm. She says she is innocent and she will not rest until the state says so as well.

The energy that position takes to maintain is formidable. However it is the articulacy with which she presses her claim that really leads an audience not just to question but to stand up and applaud as they did at Freshfields last November. This was an audience of legal professionals, legal academics, legal journalists and law students and so to see them stand as one and applaud this woman has to tell you something about the case she is making, after all the audience is not one pre-disposed to accept testimony on face value!

Sue May positively condemns the Criminal Case Review Commission and exposes the hopeless conflict of interest it has allowed itself to be neutered by. Sue May questions the process of prosecution, directly challenges the veracity of the police investigation and positively persecutes the appeals process. Her insights into the psychological processing of inmates, like the testimony of Paul Blackburn, is a withering condemnation of the system. Yet the most shocking thing about Sue May is not the story she tells but who she is and who her history says she is.

Paul Blackburn, by his own admission was a scallywag, a bit of trouble to all around him, in many ways a target waiting to be hit. In many other miscarriage of justice cases the victims will openly tell you that they are no angels but that they did not commit the crime they were convicted of. This allows us (the general unconvicted public) the room to shrug our shoulders and say, "Well there is no smoke without fire and if they had been good boys perhaps they wouldn't have gotten themselves into hot water." Sue May exposes such thinking as the unwarranted smugness it actually is.

If what Sue May is saying is true, and we will leave you to decide on her testimony which you will be able to see here, then she was sent to prison for murder through the actions of a police force that lied, a police officer that tampered with the evidence, a legal defence that was incompetent and a faith in British justice which was unfounded. In other words, if it could happen to Sue May it can happen to any one of us. Sue May proves that you do not have to have a "bad boy" past to be channelled into prison on bad police practice, tampered evidence and an inadequate legal process. That is why Sue May is a remarkable person, because in any other life she would probably be, like most of us, unremarkable.

Everyone should be concerned about the implications of this case, especially the legal profession. A profession which protects its mistakes at the expense of its integrity is not a structure which will survive a world in which information is freely available, a world where people will demonstrate to bring about democracy and a world where transparency is becoming the mantra not the sub codicil. If the legal profession is not up to this challenge, the challenge Sue May presents, then the dangers should be apparent to all who believe that the rule of law is what defines civilisation.

Click on image above to play video
See Sue May continue her talk.