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The Times
May 18 2000

 

Lord Bingham overrules DPP on death in custody

BY FRANCES GIBB, LEGAL EDITOR

THE sisters of a black remand prisoner who died in a privatised jail after a struggle with prison officers yesterday won a landmark legal ruling that the Director of Public Prosecutions must reconsider prosecuting the officers involved.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, ruled that the decision of David Calvert-Smith, QC, Director of Public Prosecutions, not to bring manslaughter charges over the death of Alton Manning was flawed and must be reconsidered.

Mr Manning, from Birmingham, died in Blakenhurst prison, Worcestershire, in December 1995. He was facing trial on two assault charges. Lord Bingham said yesterday: "The death of a person in custody "must always arouse concern. . .and if the death resulted from violence inflicted by agents of the State that concern must be profound."

Where an inquest culminated, as in the Manning case, with an "unlawful killing" verdict clearly implicating a person, although not named, "the ordinary expectation would naturally be that a prosecution would follow".

The ruling is the second time in three years that the courts have overturned decisions by a DPP not to prosecute over a death in custody.

It will lead to a fresh review of policy on deaths in custody. Procedures have already been overhauled once after previous decisions, under his predecessor Dame Barbara Mills, QC, were overturned.

Lawyers for the family had argued at the High Court hearing that there was clear evidence that "unreasonable restraint" was used on Mr Manning, 33, who was asphyxiated during a violent struggle with several officers after he was asked to squat naked for a strip search for drugs.

The conclusion not to prosecute "comes as something of a surprise", Lord Bingham said. Key issues had not been addressed and resolved.

Quashing the DPP's decision, the judge emphasised that the ruling did not require the DPP to prosecute but required "reconsideration of the decision whether or not to prosecute".

The ruling was a victory for the dead man's sisters, Patricia Manning and Elizabeth Melbourne. Mrs Melbourne said after the ruling: "We will keep fighting until someone is prosecuted. It has taken us five years to get this far and that should not have been allowed to happen."

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