Our Very Own Timothy John Evans Part I - The Historical

One of the primary cases to turn me against the death penalty was the case of John Christie and Timothy John Evans in the United Kingdom in the 1950's.

To make a long story short*, Evans was a semi-literate man of 24 with a wife and daughter. Christie lived in the same building as Evans (10 Rillington Place in the Notting Hill section of London). When Evans' wife found out she was pregnant, the couple, who were fairly poor, wanted an abortion, which, at the time, was illegal. Christie intimated to Evans that he had some medical training prior to WWII and could perform the abortion or at lest arrange for  a clandestine one. He suggested to Evans that he leave the apartment for a few days and Christie would take care of everything.

What Evans (and apparently no one else at the time save his victims and possibly his wife) did not know was that Christie was a necrophile and serial killer. Christie killed Evans' wife and daughter and when Evans contacted Christie to find out how things were going, Christie commented that something terrible had gone wrong and Evans, knowing that abortion was illegal went to a local police station and intimated that he had committed a crime (the abortion plot). When the police found Evans' wife and daughter's bodies, he was charged with their murder. Christie was the chief prosecution against Evans, who was convicted of murdering his daughter and hanged on March 9, 1950.

Some three years later, a tenant in Christie's former apartment was moving furniture and punched through a false wall where the bodies of  three women were found. A fourth was found below the floor in another room and two more were found buried in the garden. Christie confessed to the murder of Evans' wife as well as his own and was hanged July 15, 1953.

Although a rather self-serving inquiry released two days before Christie's hanging made the case that Evans had killed his wife and daughter, a subsequent inquiry in 1996 found that Evans did not kill his daughter, but probably did kill his wife. Evans' family persisted, however, and last November a judge made the following declaration:

Lawyers for Mary Westlake, the half-sister of Mr Evans, had argued that the posthumous royal pardon already granted to her brother was an "inadequate remedy" to put right an "historic and unique injustice" and wanted his conviction quashed.

But Mr Justice Collins, sitting with Mr Justice Stanley Burnton, rejected an attempt by Mrs Westlake, from Whitley, Melksham, Wiltshire, to overturn a Criminal Cases Review Commission refusal in March to refer the case back to the appeal court.

Instead the judge declared that Mr Evans should be regarded as having been innocent of the charge of murdering his baby daughter - the offence for which he was executed in 1950.

The judge added: "And no jury could properly have convicted him of murdering his wife, and he must be regarded as innocent of that charge too."

This can give you an idea as to how difficult it can be to prove posthumous innocence. Why is that troublesome? Because now we may very well have our Timothy John Evans in Larry Griffin.

Citing a concern that an innocent man may have been executed, a group that includes a congressman, leading lawyers, and the victim's family pointed yesterday to evidence that they said could clear the name of the man, Larry Griffin.

Prosecutors have decided to reopen the case of Griffin, who was convicted in 1981 in the murder of Quintin Moss, a 19-year-old drug dealer who was shot to death. Griffin maintained his innocence; he was put to death in 1995.

Now, many people, including some members of Moss's family, say they believe him.

''What I have heard recently . . . leads me to believe an innocent man was executed for this murder, while the real killers have not been brought to justice," Representative William Lacy Clay, Democrat of Missouri, said at a news conference yesterday with other supporters of Griffin.

As Bob Herbert wrote here, Griffin was not a model citizen. That fact, of course is ultimately irrelevant. Justice should not be a crap shoot. Those that are responsible for crimes should be the ones punished for them.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, death sentences, when carried out, leave no room for error. Timothy John Evans was posthumously pardoned and his body reburied in consecrated ground. His case is largely credited with ending the death penalty in the UK. It's high time we got rid of it here.

*[Editor's note: In reading through the different historical accounts of this case, one can state few things for certain in terms of the actual chronology. Among the things I believe are beyond dispute are Christie's role as the actual murderer, the abortion plans and the other facts surrounding Christie's perversions. I believe that these facts among others makes a compelling case for Christie's guilt and Evans' corresponding innocence. Much of my memory of the case relies heavily on Ludovic Kennedy's book Ten Rillington Place.]

Cross posted at The American Street.

Comments

[David Westlake]

I am the nephew of Timothy John Evans. His execution (a state-sponsored murder!) took place just over 60 years ago on 9 March 1950. The effects of the miscarriage of justice, which Tim suffered, have reverberated through my family for four generations, and we have still failed to obtain a properly 'legal' declaration of his innocence after all this time.
The only good thing to arise from Tim's case was that it was instrumental in getting the death penalty abolished in Britain.
If there is anything I can do or say, from my family's experience of such a miscarriage, to assist the cause of the abolition of capital punishment anywhere else in the world, I will gladly help!