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Title: Murder at the Farm: Who Killed Carl Bridgewater by Paul Foot ISBN: 0-283-99165-8 Publisher: Pan Macmillan Pub. Date: 11 September, 1986 Format: Hardcover

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Blind Justice
Comment: This book is written by a seasoned investigative journalist. It concerns a local murder committed at Wordsley in the West Midlands. The case provoked national outrage because the victim, a 13 year-old newspaper delivery boy called Carl Bridgewater, seemed to have stumbled upon a burglary and been gratuitously killed to silence him. Four men were convicted of his murder in 1978. Twenty years later, three walked free from the Court of Appeal - the fourth had died whilst in prison. The author, Paul Foot, had long been one of their leading champions.

Foot tells the story well combining a wealth of evidence of their innocence with a journalist's readability. The story as it unfolds is a depressingly familiar one of the police constructing the case for the prosecution by prematurely concluding investigations into alternative lines of enquiry. The defendants were all small-time local criminals and it was all too easy for the police to believe the worst of them. That is commonplace enough but what followed is what makes this case a particularly instructive one. Foot shows how the police and prosecutors, convinced of the righteousness of their cause, forged confessions and concealed exculpatory evidence to ensure that the defendants were convicted.

As evidence of their innocence mounted over the years, so public concern grew until by the time of their release there had been six separate police inquiries, two hearings before the Court of Appeal and the case had been referred back to the court twice by the Home Secretary. What was almost as bad as the prosecutorial misconduct was the dogged determination of the courts to uphold the convictions in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. We may well ask ourselves - why do courts behave like this?

Rating: 5
Summary: A Brilliant Read
Comment: Paul Foot does it again in this book, about one of the lesser known miscarriages of British justice, the Bridgewater murder, where four men were unjustly imprisoned for the murder of paperboy Carl Bridgewater. Foot meticulously goes through the evidence, finding all the flaws and holes in the prosecution case, and positing a plausible alternate theory as to who could have committed the murder. The Bridgewater Three were released in 1998 (one died in prison), due in large part to the dedicated work of themselves, their families and this fantastic book about them. For anybody interested in the workings or otherwise of Bristish justice, this and Foot's other books about Helen Smith, Colin Wallace and Paul Hanratty are a must read.