Stock, Anthony (2/2)

Anthony Stock was convicted of robbery on 17 July 1970 at Leeds Assizes and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.

The prosecution case was that Mr Stock and three others had attacked employees of the Tesco store in the Merrion Centre in Leeds with iron bars, and stolen over £4,000 that was being taken to a night safe.

In February 1971 Mr Stock’s first appeal against conviction was dismissed. His application for leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused later in 1971 and in 1974, the European Commission of Human Rights decided that Mr Stock’s application under the European Convention on Human Rights was inadmissible.

In March 1979, following the confession of a police informant to the same robbery, the Home Office asked police to make enquiries as to the safety of Mr Stock’s conviction. Following receipt of the police report in 1981, the Home Secretary decided not to refer the case to the Court of Appeal.

However, 10 years later, Mr Stock’s application to the Home Secretary was renewed and the case was referred back to the Court of Appeal. Mr Stock’s second appeal against conviction was dismissed in July 1996.

In 1998 Mr Stock first applied to the CCRC and his conviction was referred back to the Court of Appeal. This third appeal was dismissed on 26 April 2004.

In October 2004 Mr Stock applied to the CCRC again. The CCRC decided to refer the conviction to the Court of Appeal for a second time.

The CCRC considered a range of issues, including new evidence about the conduct of the original police investigation, particularly in relation to identification procedures, and the way in which this issue was addressed at the 2004 appeal.

Other issues concerned non-disclosure to the defence, the summing-up at the original trial, and new evidence and argument about the credibility of the informant’s evidence.

The CCRC referred the conviction in September 2007.

The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction in August 2008.