It is too striking a coincidence that Bentley, a 19-year-old of very limited intelligence, should use precisely the same words," Mr Fitzgerald said. Kilmuir, 1st Earl of (1964). Political adventure: the memoirs of the Earl of Kilmuir. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. p. 206. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list ( link) Watson, Geoffrey (2016). "Let him have it: the short, sad life of Derek Bentley" (PDF). The New South Wales Bar Association . Retrieved 28 September 2020. Judgement of England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) in R v. Derek William Bentley (Deceased) [1998] EWCA Crim 2516, 1998

The 1990 book Let Him Have It, Chris written by M J Trow explores the inconsistencies in the police version of events. This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( September 2020) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Various appeals highlighted the ambiguous evidence, Bentley's mental age and the fact that he did not fire the fatal shot, were all rejected by the then Home Secretary. There were several instances of people being sentenced to death before later being found innocent. These wrongful convictions were heavily publicised, such as Walter Rowland in 1947 and Timothy Evans in 1950 .Smith, K. J. M. (September 2010). "Goddard, Rayner, Baron Goddard (1877–1971)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/31152 . Retrieved 16 August 2014. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) At 9 am on 28 January 1953, Bentley was hanged at Wandsworth Prison, London, by Albert Pierrepoint, with Harry Allen assisting. There were protests outside the prison and two people were arrested and fined for damage to property. What was clear was that Derek Bentley was;- Quote - "illiterate and mentally subnormal". He was ill prepared to undergo cross-examination and did not present a 'good image' to the jury; not surprising considering his mental age of 11. Firstly, the defence claimed there was ambiguity in the evidence as to how many shots were fired and by whom. A later forensic ballistics expert cast doubt on whether Craig could have hit Miles if he had shot at him deliberately: [4] The fatal bullet was not found. Craig had used bullets of different undersized calibres, and the sawn-off barrel made it inaccurate to a degree of six feet at the range from which he fired. On 28 January 1953, Derek Bentley was hanged at Wandsworth Prison. The execution caused public unrest, with mass protests outside the prison and the arrests of two people. The flaws of the Derek Bentley case saw a change in public opinion about capital punishment in the United Kingdom. Let's explore the arguments for and against the death penalty at the time.

Bentley was released from Kingswood school on 28 July 1950, a year early, though he was told that he would remain under the care of Kingswood until 29 September 1954, by which time he was dead. He was a recluse for the rest of 1950, rarely venturing out of the house, breaking his isolation in January 1951. Derek William Bentley (30 June 1933– 28 January 1953) was a British man who was hanged for the murder of a policeman during a burglary attempt. Christopher Craig, then aged 16, a friend and accomplice of Bentley, was accused of the murder. Bentley was convicted as a party to the crime under the English law principle of joint enterprise, as the burglary had been committed in mutual understanding and bringing deadly weapons. The outcome of the trial, and Home Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe's failure to grant clemency to Bentley, were highly controversial.Bentley's sister Iris mounted a lifelong campaign to quash Bentley's conviction after he was executed at Wandsworth Prison in January 1953.

Both Craig and Bentley were charged with the murder of PC Miles the following day, 3 November 1952. They were tried by jury before the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard, at the Old Bailey in London between 9 December and 11 December 1952. Christmas Humphreys, Senior Treasury Counsel, led for the prosecution. [7] A day does not go by when I don't think about Derek and now his innocence has been proved with this judgment. There was much political pressure to commute Bentley's sentence, including a memorandum signed by over 200 members of Parliament. Despite several attempts, Parliament was given no opportunity to debate the issue until the sentence had been carried out. [11] The Home Office also refused Dr Hill permission to make his report public. At the time of the burglary attempt and Miles's death, murder was a capital offence in England and Wales. Minors under 18 were not sentenced to death: consequently, of the two defendants, despite Craig having fired the fatal shot, only Bentley faced the death penalty if convicted. The doctrine of felony murder or "constructive malice" meant that a charge of manslaughter was not an option, as the "malicious intent" of the armed robbery was transferred to the shooting. Bentley's best defence was that he was effectively under arrest when Miles was killed. There were three principal points of contention at trial: Also known as Common Purpose, Joint Enterprise involves crimes of two or more people. The law means that a secondary offender can be prosecuted as the principal offender if they intended to assist the main offender in their crime.In 1993 a limited posthumous pardon was granted, accepting Bentley should not have been hanged, although maintaining his guilt. When Yallop telephoned Haler the day after the initial interview, he reportedly confirmed his estimate of the bullet size. Shortly before the publication of Yallop's book, Haler was provided with a transcript of the interview, and Yallop says Haler again confirmed as accurate. After the subsequent broadcast of the BBC Play for Today adaptation of To Encourage the Others, directed by Alan Clarke and starring Charles Bolton, Haler sought to deny that he had given any specific estimate of the size of the bullet that killed Miles beyond being "of large calibre". The .32 ACP bullet is not considered to be of large calibre.