Thomas, Nicole

Nicole Thomas, then Nicola Edgington, was convicted at the Central Criminal Court in 2013 of the attempted murder of Kerry Clarke and the murder of Sally Hodkin in South London in 2011. She received a sentence of life imprisonment with a minimum term of 37 years.

The CCRC received an application for review of the conviction in June 2016.

The CCRC referral was based on the question of whether Ms Thomas should have been convicted of manslaughter by way of diminished responsibility rather than murder. There was no suggestion that she was not criminally responsible.

Prior to the offences, Ms Thomas had experienced a psychotic episode. She had also been convicted of manslaughter in 2006 on the grounds of diminished responsibility and had consequently served three and a half years in a secure psychiatric facility.

The CCRC instructed a psychiatrist to assess the mental health evidence used in the trial. 

After conducting a series of complex and lengthy investigations, the CCRC called into question key aspects of the medical and psychiatric evidence in the prosecution case against Ms Thomas.

Its fresh psychiatric report identified that the jury had not been made aware of important aspects of the earlier evidence, which gave the jury a misleading impression of Ms Thomas’s mental health.

The CCRC therefore considered that there was a real possibility the Court of Appeal would quash Ms Thomas’s conviction for murder and replace it with a conviction for manslaughter by way of diminished responsibility.  

The CCRC referred the conviction in September 2023.