Steel, Anthony

Anthony Steel was convicted in December 1979 of murder and received a sentence of life imprisonment.

The CCRC received an application for a review of the conviction in October 1997.

A confession statement had been the foundation of the case against Mr Steel at trial.

Following review, the CCRC concluded that there had been significant breaches of standards of fairness during Mr Steel’s police interrogation.

Mr Steel did not have the benefit of legal advice in any of his seven interviews and was not attended by anyone acting as an appropriate adult.

Mr Steel was in custody for over 45 hours and made repeated denials before he made any admissions to the offence.

In addition, the CCRC obtained new expert psychiatric evidence concerning Mr Steel’s personal vulnerabilities and characteristics.

This evidence indicated that Mr Steel had been more vulnerable at the police station than was known at trial.

The CCRC further considered that the trial judge’s directions did not give full expression to Mr Steel’s vulnerabilities which prevented the jury from making a fully informed assessment of the reliability of his confession statements.

The CCRC referred the conviction in July 2000.

The Court of Appeal quashed the conviction in February 2003.