Bailey, Kathleen

Kathleen Bailey was convicted in June 1977 of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm and received a sentence of two years’ imprisonment suspended for two years.

The CCRC inherited an application for review of the conviction from the Home Office in March 1997.

Two of Ms Bailey’s co-defendants (Reginald Dudley and Robert Maynard) were convicted of murder on the basis of both disputed confession evidence and the evidence of a criminal associate.

The senior investigating police officer had chosen to make a full verbatim written (rather than tape-recorded) record of Mr Dudley and Mr Maynard’s interviews to assure their authenticity.

Mr Dudley and Mr Maynard claimed that these interview records had been falsified.

During review, the CCRC obtained new expert handwriting evidence which indicated that it would have been a physical impossibility for any person to have written a verbatim account of the interviews in which the defendants were said to have confessed over the time that those interviews were said to have lasted.

In addition, the CCRC interviewed the associate who provided evidence against the defendants at trial.

The associate retracted his evidence against both Mr Maynard and Mr Dudley.

In these circumstances, the CCRC considered that there was substantial doubt over the credibility of the police evidence given at trial and that therefore there was a real possibility the Court of Appeal would consider Ms Bailey’s conviction unsafe.

The CCRC referred the conviction in June 2000.

The Court of Appeal quashed the conviction in May 2002.