TIMOTHY JOHN EVANS (Hansard, 14 February 1961)

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the transfer to his next-of-kin of the remains of Timothy John Evans.

I do not think that the case of Timothy John Evans is now a matter for any more judicial inquiry. I think that it is a matter now for the House of Commons. If I may say so, with respect, I do not think that it is for us to consider now the advice which the Home Secretary can give to the Monarch. It is no part of a back bencher's duty here to interfere between the Home Secretary and the Monarch in a matter on which his particular advice is needed. I think that I should outrage certain principles of Government policy if I were to suggest bringing in an indemnity Bill in the case of Evans.

What I am asking the House to do is to agree that the remains of Timothy John Evans should be transferred to his next-of-kin. If the House does that, it will then concur in the view which we hold that Timothy John Evans was wrongly convicted and, in effect, the House will be saying that he should not have been buried in a felon's grave. We shall transfer his remains to his parents for Christian burial.

The fact is that Timothy John Evans was sentenced for the murder of his child in 1950. We know now that—[Interruption.] I should have thought that it would at least have been appreciated that I am discussing a matter concerning the dead. We now know things which, if they had been in the mind of the jury in 1950, would have meant that Timothy John Evans would never have been so sentenced. Lord Birkett—who is a far more experienced criminal lawyer and probably a better judge than the present Lord Chancellor—has gone on record as saying: If the facts as they are now known had been known in 1950, no jury could possibly have said that the case against Evans was proved beyond all reasonable doubt. We now know that, four years later, John Christie was to stand trial, and we know also that at the time when Evans was sentenced there were within the 1246 precincts of the same house the bodies of two women undoubtedly murdered by Christie. We know that Christie was a necrophile and that all his victims were subjected to the same treatment—a ligature round the neck and sexual interference after death. We know that this happened to Mrs. Evans and, of course, it would have been completely inconsistent to allege that her husband had done it to her.

We know now that it would have been stretching the bounds of possibility to suggest that there must have been two stranglers, both necrophiles, about in the same house at the same time. The area of reasonable doubt now is so wide that it cannot possibly support the Lord Chancellor's opinion that any suggestion that an innocent person could be hanged in this country is quite fantastic.

One of the sponsors of my Bill, at his own request, is my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), who was Home Secretary at the time. He will allow me to say that, if he had known then what he knows now, even after the Court of Criminal Appeal had rejected Evans' appeal, he would have stopped the execution.

We know now, of course, that the Scott Henderson Report had become worthless. It was asked for by a previous Home Secretary in terms which did not give Mr. Scott Henderson any chance at all. The time was far too short. It was rushed for a debate in Parliament. No one who has studied the subject at all and who has read the debate can read the Scott Henderson Report without a measure of cynicism and without a great deal of sympathy for Mr. Scott Henderson himself. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend has no sympathy for lawyers. I have. A great many of them are mistaken from time to time. I have a great deal of sympathy for anyone rushed into attempting to make a report of that sort.

In 1956, when I was in the United States, I discussed with a judge of the Supreme Court the question whether our method of execution was better than the American method. He thought that we hanged murderers too quickly. I suggested that the Americans probably despatched them too slowly, thinking then 1247 of the Rosenberg case. Since then, of course, we have heard of the Chessman case. His reply was, "There is something awfully final about death, and at least under the American system we procrastinate only at the request of the defence", and he added this significant remark, "One of these days, a case will catch up on you". I think that that case has caught up on us now.

What reparation can we make? I think that we can make very little except that we can say that we were mistaken. The majesty of British justice is based not upon its infallibility, but upon the belief that, when it is found that the processes of law have gone wrong, we admit the mistake. Indeed, our civilisation depends not on what we do about such matters as the hydrogen bomb, defence and war, but upon the way we treat the weak, the unfortunate, and those who cannot hit back.

I say, too, that when we have looked at all the evidence in the case, we have a right and duty to express the humility of the House and say, as I hope we shall say through my proposed Bill, that we admit that we were mistaken. Let us say that we will restore the remains of Timothy John Evans to his family, who are Catholics and who want Christian burial. Let us, on this occasion, remember the words of the poet: 1248 The Chaplain will not kneel to pray By his dishonoured grave: Nor mark it with that Cross That Christ for sinners gave, Because the man was one of those Whom Christ came down to save. I say that Timothy John Evans was judicially killed in 1950—that he was wrongly killed. That no jury would conviot now is clear beyond a peradventure. It is not now for the lawyers to go into the matter again, but for this House, in its own common sense, to say that this is another matter which should be expunged from the record. I ask the House to say that Evans's remains should be returned to those who loved him most in his lifetime as a belated apology for the terrible tragedy which occurred as a result of judicial processes honestly pursued having led to the wrong conclusion.