Witspeak Podcasts
Log in Start a podcast
Innocent Until Heard artwork
Innocent Until HeardS1 · E10:4860 plays Members only

The Guildford Four and the Interview Notes That Did Not Match

0:00 / 0:48

This episode is for members. Sign up free or log in to hear the whole episode.

RSS
Show notes

The Guildford Four

In 1975 Gerry Conlon, Paul Hill, Patrick Armstrong and Carole Richardson were convicted of the Guildford pub bombings on the strength of confessions they retracted almost immediately. Keziah examines how those statements were obtained and why it took until 1989 for the Court of Appeal to quash the convictions.

  • The 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act and seven days of questioning
  • Why alibi evidence was never put in front of the jury
  • The Balcombe Street confessions that were set aside in 1977
  • The Avon and Somerset inquiry and the typed interview notes
  • What the Royal Commission changed about police interviewing

A case about pressure, and about who gets believed.

Transcript
Hello and welcome to Innocent Until Heard. My name is Keziah Thornbury, I spent most of my career as a defence lawyer, and this is a show about the cases where the system convicted the wrong people and how that eventually came to light. We begin in England in October 1974, when bombs in two Guildford pubs killed five people. Within weeks four young people from Belfast and London were in custody, and within a year they were serving life sentences on the basis of confessions they said were forced out of them. No forensic evidence, no witnesses, just the statements. It took fifteen years and a set of typed interview notes found in a police archive to bring those convictions down. Today we walk through how it happened, step by step, without pretending any of it was simple. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
Open as text

More from Innocent Until Heard