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In the recent history of miscarriages of justice, the case of Danny Major is uniquely shocking. Whilst working as a police constable in 2003, he claims to have been fitted up by colleagues who had beaten up an 18-year-old detainee in Leeds Bridewell custody suite in the early hours of a Saturday morning. He believes his fellow officers conspired to pin the blame on him, a young constable six years into his policing career, when the teenager had to be rushed by ambulance to hospital because they thought he was going to die.
In 2013, Greater Manchester Police began a review into this appalling episode, optimistically called Operation Lamp. It’s been 10 years since I spoke to West Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Mark Burns-Williamson, who had commissioned the review.
Expecting to be brushed off, I was surprised to be told: “The evidence supports the premise that there may have been a miscarriage of justice and that there is sufficient fresh evidence to support the case being referred back to the [Court of Appeal] by the Criminal Case Review Commission (CCRC).”
Operation Lamp vindicated Danny Major.
“In 30 years in the police service, I’ve never seen a report as critical of one police force by another force,” said Chief Inspector Ian Hansen, chairman of the Greater Manchester Police Federation.
I wrote about Danny’s case six years ago for Byline Times. This month, the troubled miscarriage of justice watchdog finally referred the case to the Court of Appeal. Why the wait?