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NB This page is still under construction and currently only has a small amount of information relating to the old A2 Criminal Law specification. Information relating to the whole of the new A2 Criminal Law specification will be added soon - please keep checking back.
Gapped Handouts on Incohate Offences
Some tips and advice on being successful at A2 Criminal Law
Participation
Gapped handout and case study on Derek Bently
Derek William Bentley "A victim of British justice?"
These words appear on Derek Bentley's gravestone.
Derek Bentley was hanged on the 28th of January 1953, at the age of 19.
On the 30th of July 1998, the Appeal Court finally ruled (after 45 years of campaigning by his father, sister Iris and since Iris' death the previous year, by her daughter, Maria Bentley Dingwall), that his conviction was unsafe.
Derek Bentley was illiterate and is alleged to have had a mental age of 11. He also suffered from epilepsy as a result of a head injury.
On Sunday the 2nd of November 1952, Derek Bentley went out with his friend, 16 year old Christopher Craig, to see if they could carry out a burglary. Bentley was armed with a knife and a knuckle-duster which Craig had recently given him. Craig had a similar knife but was also armed with a .455 Eley revolver. Craig normally carried a gun and it is reasonable to suppose that Bentley would have known this. They decided to break into a warehouse, as they climbed onto the roof of the warehouse, they were noticed by a little girl who lived opposite and whose mother phoned the police. The nearest patrol car arrived very quickly and contained a detective constable (DC Fairfax) and a uniformed constable.
Craig and Bentley were on the roof as the police arrived and attempted to run but DC Fairfax quickly detained Bentley (note I have not said arrested). Craig decided to shoot his way out and fired at DC Fairfax wounding him in the shoulder. At some time during the shooting, Bentley is alleged to have said the now famous words "Let him have it, Chris".
Bentley offered no resistance to Fairfax and stood by the injured policeman without any restraint for the next 30 minutes or so. (Hardly the action of a desperate young thug who could very probably have easily overpowered the wounded and unarmed Fairfax)
Other officers arrived on the scene within minutes, some of them armed. Craig continued shooting at anyone that moved and as the first of the reinforcements, PC Sidney Miles came up the stairs and through the door onto the roof, he was shot through the head and died almost instantly.
Both Craig and Bentley were charged with the murder of PC Miles. But should Bentley have been charged with murder at all? There were reasons for such a charge, but they took no account of his retarded mental state or the undisputed fact that he neither had possessed nor fired a gun.
 Watch the film Let Him Have it
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