The Tony Stock affair is one of the most important in the field of claimed miscarriages of justice. This is the only case - so far - to have been referred to the Court of Appeal twice by the CCRC, and there were four appeals in total: in 1971, 1996, 2004 and 2008.
For those not familiar with the case, what follows is a brief summary (there will be important information that I may not cover here but can be brought up in the thread):
In 1970, a gang armed with iron bars and other makeshift weapons committed a robbery at the Merrion Centre in Leeds. A sum of approximately £4,000.00 was taken from two Tesco employees who were on their way to deposit the cash at the end of the trading day. One of these employees, the store manager, had his fingers fractured. Neither could provide an identification of the suspects.
However, a witness called Stewart Wilson was able to provide a description to Leeds Police of one of the assailants, who turned to him and had threatened him. This formed the basis of an identikit drawing. Wilson was also shown photographs of possible suspects and he identified one who looked similar to the man he had seen.
A Bradford detective saw the identikit and thought back to a man known as Anthony ('Tony') Stock who had been acquitted of a robbery in 1968 and also had two prior convictions for robbery. This information was passed to the Leeds detectives, who then contacted local police in Stockton-on-Tees, where Tony lived.
Tony denied all knowledge of the incident and refused to participate in an identification parade. The Leeds detectives then travelled up to Stockton-on-Tees themselves to speak to Tony, and when this got them nowhere, they returned with Mr Wilson himself and staged a confrontation at Tony's front door. A scuffle followed and Tony was arrested for the robbery and taken down to Leeds in the same car as Wilson.
Tony was then charged and was tried at Leeds Assizes that same year. The prosecution rested on the identification evidence of Wilson and four more Tesco employees who claimed they had seen a man identical to Tony at the store at times before the incident. The defence rested on Tony's alibi, which was that the day of the robbery was his birthday and he was at home with his wife and 9 year old daughter celebrating. Both the wife and daughter gave evidence, each crying in the witness box. The judge warned the jury to be careful about relying on a 'family alibi'. The jury convicted Tony and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and was released after five years.
Tony, a Welshman (born or naturalised, I'm not sure which), died in 2012, aged 73. He vehemently protested his innocence to the end.
When you google this case, a justice writer and campaigner called Jon Robins pops up everywhere. He has written a book on the case and many articles, mainly in justice-related publications. Other than that, despite the case's internal importance to the 'justice community', not much comment has ever been made by mainstream journalists over the years, other than on three isolated occasions:
In 1971, Tony went on a hunger strike in protest, but he was persuaded to drop it by justice campaigners.
In 1972, a journalist called Derek Humphry (later famous for campaigning in favour of euthanasia) wrote a sceptical article for The Sunday Times called "A knock on the door -- and Mr Stock gets 10 years in jail". Unfortunately, no trace of this article remains.
In 1979, an organised criminal called Sam Benefield turned supergrass and admitted to a string of robberies, including this one. Benefield made it clear that Tony was not involved. As a result, local newspapers printed sensational headlines to the effect that Tony was innocent. World In Action produced a documentary on the case.
In response, West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police (as they were then called) carried out their own internal inquiry, the report for which was then sent to the then-Home Secretary, Willie Whitelaw, who was considering a C3 Division application by Tony. Whitelaw refused the application.
Eventually, the case reached the Court of Appeal in 1996 following a C3 Division referral. This was a dramatic appeal because of the appearance of the supergrass Sam Benefield, disguised as an Arab sheikh for his own safety. Sam maintained in evidence that Tony had nothing to do with the robbery, indeed he had never met him before in his life. Benefield was able to provide information that could only be known by one of the robbers.
The appeal was rejected, on two bases:
First, the strength of the identification evidence. Quite simply, it was considered too much of a coincidence that a total of five individuals could consistently identify Stock, and the problems with the identification evidence were not considered sufficient to upturn the identifications.
Second, Sam Benefield's evidence was not considered credible.
Subsequent referred appeals in 2004 and 2008 have been rejected on essentially the same basis, by citing that 1996 appeal judgment, which was written by Lord Justice (Igor) Judge. While containing one or two errors and misunderstandings of the evidence, Lord Judge's judgement was still considered by the court as late as 2008 to be a robust defence of Tony's conviction.
What to think?
Jon Robins, who I mentioned earlier, is adamant that Tony was innocent. However, a close reading of Robins' articles shows that he writes in a very selective and misleading way about the case. His book, which I have also read, is no improvement. It is still important to read his articles and his book in order to understand the case, but it is also important to understand he writes with an agenda that is blind to any contrary argument.
I have linked to Robins' pieces below, so that you can decide for yourself. I have also linked to a good piece by the Barrister Blogger, who takes the same view as Robins. I have the impression that the case is seen as a sort of cause célèbre among naive and idealistic educated professionals.
Robins follows in the eponymous footsteps of the Private Eye investigative journalist, Paul Foot, who writes of Tony's innocence with firm conviction but in the process misses out key points that would give the reader a more balanced and rounded picture. Probably Foot's most important article on the case was his 'Judge Dreadful' piece in Private Eye, published in 1996 just after the second failed appeal, in which he excoriates Igor Judge - and in fairness, not without some justification.
It is thanks to Paul Foot that we have the title of Robins' book on the case, which is also my title for this thread.
What do I think?
I believe that any adversarial criminal justice system, if it is to uphold Blackstone's ratio, must necessarily embody a paradox: that of the morally and factually guilty man who must walk free due to the insufficiency of the evidence. I believe that paradox applies to Tony. I cannot say for sure, of course, but I suspect they caught the right person, but the case against him was insufficient on the evidence and he should not have been convicted.
Last note: This Forum has built up quite a large archive of discussions on different cases, so the usual disclaimer applies: I cannot find on the Forum a thread on the Tony Stock case, but if there is one, by all means merge this post with that one.