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R v Secretary of State for the Home Department ex p. Bentley, Court of Appeal - Administrative Court, July 07, 1993, [1993] EWHC Admin 2


CO/2912/92
BAILII Citation Number: [1993] EWHC QB 2
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
(DIVISIONAL COURT)
Royal Courts of Justice

Date: Wednesday, 7th July 1993.
Before:
LORD JUSTICE WATKINS
and
LORD JUSTICE NEILL
and
MR JUSTICE TUCKEY
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Crown Office List
THE QUEEN v
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Ex parte IRIS PAMALA BENTLEY
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(Computer Aided Transcript of the Stenograph Notes of John Larking, Chancery House, Chancery Lane, London WC2
Telephone No: 071 404 7464 071 404 7464
Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)
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MR D PANNICK Q.C. and MR M SHAW (instructed by Messrs B M Birnberg & Co., London, SE1) appeared on behalf of the Applicant.
MR S RICHARDS and MR R SINGH (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared on behalf of the Respondent.
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JUDGMENT
LORD JUSTICE WATKINS: This is the judgment of the Court.
Iris Pamala Bentley, the applicant for judicial review, has been campaigning for almost 4O years to obtain recognition of what she and many other people regard as a gross miscarriage of justice in the case of her brother, Derek Bentley. She wants that recognition to take the form of a posthumous Free Pardon for him. That, Mr. Kenneth Clarke, the Secretary of State for the Home Department (the Home Secretary), by a decision which was announced on l October l992, declined to recommend.
That is the decision which we have been asked by the applicant to review. The relief which she seeks, and for which she has the leave of this Court to apply, is a declaration that the Home Secretary erred in law in declining to recommend a posthumous Free Pardon for Derek Bentley and mandamus to require the Home Secretary to reconsider the matter. Bentley, then l9 years of age, was convicted, together with Christopher Craig, at the Central Criminal Court on ll December l952 before Lord Goddard, Chief Justice, of the murder of Police Constable Sidney George Miles at C...
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