MR. H. G. Dunsmore

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 17 June 1964.

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Photo of Miss Mervyn Pike Miss Mervyn Pike , Melton 12:00, 17 June 1964

My hon. Friend has, as one would expect, gone to a great deal of trouble on behalf of his constituent and has argued his case very strongly. I have listened with great care to everything he has said, and I will convey his argument and pleas to my right hon. Friend.

My hon. Friend contends that as this young man was convicted of being in unlawful possession of three separate objects and as subsequent investigations showed that he was in lawful possession of two of them—with the result that my right hon. Friend thought it right to recommend the remission of the whole of the remainder of his sentence and to order his immediate release—it would have been only right to remove the effects of the convictions altogether by recommending a free pardon.

Naturally my right hon. Friend considered very carefully whether the circumstances justified this course. But a free pardon is, rightly, regarded as an exceptional act of grace to be granted only in very special circumstances, and by long-standing practice the innocence—moral as well as technical—of a person must be unquestionable before a free pardon is recommended. This, I am afraid, does not apply in the case of Dunsmore, whose complete innocence of all the charges on which he was convicted has not been fully established.

As my hon. Friend said, Dunsmore was himself very largely responsible for his conviction and detention by his lies to the police and his refusal to tell the true story until late in the day. I will briefly relate the facts of the case. The facts are that on 25th September, 1963, two Metropolitan police constables saw Dunsmore running from the Mall and looking behind him as he did so. Their suspicions being aroused, they stopped and questioned him. He told them that he had come to London two days before with a friend called John, had been sleeping out and was now lost.

He was found to have in his possession a lighter with the initials "H.A.W.", a ring with initials which they read as "W.M." or "M.W." and a Smiths watch. The police questioned Dunsmore about his possession of these articles. He said that he had bought them all two weeks previously from a friend in Leeds whose name he could not give. Asked to give the make of the watch he said it was a Timex. Further questioned, he said that he had bought the articles from a friend in London a week before. Told that his explanations were unsatisfactory, he ran away.

He was caught and taken to the police station, where he was told that if he would give the names and addresses of the people from whom he had bought the articles, inquiries would be made to check his story. He would only say that he bought the articles from John. Dunsmore was charged with having in his possession a cigarette lighter, ring and wristwatch suspected of having been stolen or unlawfully obtained.

After appearing at Bow Street Magistrates' Court, he was remanded while police inquiries were made to trace the owners of the property, but these were unsuccessful. On 2nd October he was convicted at Bow Street of the offence, and on 18th October, following a remand for probation and borstal suitability reports, he was sent to London Sessions for sentence with a view to borstal training. At the same time he was committed for sentence for an offence of stealing property from a shop for which he was on probation.

During the magistrates' court hearing the clerk of the court pointed out to Dunsmore that it would help him if he could name the persons from whom he had obtained the articles. He still said nothing. Dunsmore appealed to quarter sessions against his conviction. In his grounds of appeal he explained his possession of the articles as follows; first, that he had bought the wristwatch off a friend, John Duke, it being John Duke's property; secondly, that he had bought the ring off a neighbour, William Watson, for five shillings; and, thirdly, that he had found the lighter.

At the appeal hearing, on 20th November, John Duke gave evidence in support of Dunsmore's story. William Watson was not called, but Dunsmore's mother handed in a note from a William Warrington, who said that' he had sold the ring to Dunsmore. The appeal was dismissed, and Dunsmore was sent to borstal training for the current offence and for the offence for which he had been on probation since February, 1963. He had previously been on probation in 1962 for an offence of larceny from a schoolroom.

It was at this stage that Mrs. Dunsmore approached my hon. Friend. She disputed the police account of how they had first encountered Dunsmore and the police evidence of what Dunsmore had said to them. She mentioned that "We have seen two men whom he bought the watch and ring off, one went with us to the appeal", but she produced no additional evidence. My hon. Friend then asked me for information about the case, and I obtained a full report from the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. This, I think, is the answer to my hon. Friend's question about inquiries. This report did not disclose any information which had not been available in court.

While my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is always ready to examine any new evidence that may be brought to his notice after a trial, it would be quite improper for him, as I am sure my hon. Friend will understand, to purport to retry a case on the same evidence that had already been considered and rejected by the court. Accordingly, we were bound, on the information then before us, to take the view that we could find no grounds for recommending any interference with the sentence imposed by the court, and so I informed my hon. Friend.

In March, as my hon. Friend has said, our attention was drawn to an article in the People reporting investigations it had made following an approach by Dunsmore's mother. The People claimed to have uncovered evidence showing that Dunsmore was, as he said, the lawful owner of the ring and the watch. It said that William Warrington's story that he sold the ring to Dunsmore was supported by Mrs. Warrington. It also said that it had evidence to support John Duke's claim to have sold Dunsmore the watch. Duke's cousin, Alfred Dale, was prepared to say that Duke gave him the watch to pawn, and subsequently sold the pawn ticket to Dunsmore, who redeemed the watch. Duke's mother was prepared to give evidence of seeing Duke sell the pawn ticket to Dunsmore, and the pawnbroker named by Dunsmore remembered the watch being pledged and redeemed.

This, if true, amounted to new evidence, and we thought it right to ask the police to investigate it. Their investigation took some weeks, but by the end of April they were able to report, after questioning the persons named in the People and obtaining other, corroborative evidence, that the account in the People was substantially correct. Although it was clear that Dunsmore could have been convicted, on his own admission, of stealing by finding the lighter, it was considered that some action to mitigate his sentence ought to be taken by the Home Secretary.

There were three possible courses to be considered, and the first was whether a free pardon was appropriate. As I have indicated earlier, however, a free pardon is recommended only when innocence is complete and unquestionable, and this was not so in Dunsmore's case. My hon. Friend has represented that, in keeping the lighter after he had found it, Dunsmore was doing no more than very many people would have done. But keeping the lighter was an offence, and the fact that other people might have done the same thing in similar circumstances is, as I am sure hon. Members will agree, no sufficient reason for lowering the standards which successive Home Secretaries have always felt must be satisfied before Her Majesty can properly be recommended to grant a free pardon.

Secondly, consideration was given to whether Dunsmore should be released on licence. The release of a borstaller on licence is something the Home Secretary has power to do under Statute, and this would have had the effect of restoring supervision to which, had it not been for the current conviction, Dunsmore would have been subject until February, 1965, by the probation order. But it was decided that the right course was to recommend the use of the Royal Prerogative to grant Dunsmore unconditional remission of the remainder of his sentence, and he was released on 9th May.

My hon. Friend has expressed dissatisfaction that his earlier representations did not lead to this result. There was, of course, no question of greater regard being paid to the newspaper than to his representations. The difference was that the People indicated the existence of evidence which was not before the court and might, if true, provide grounds for recommending interference with the court's decision.

My hon. Friend has asked why Dunsmore's request for a defence certificate was refused by London Sessions in November, and he has suggested that had Dunsmore been represented his story would have been more thoroughly checked, and the appeal, perhaps, have succeeded. This is not a point on which I can usefully say very much. The decision whether or not to grant legal aid is entirely for the court to which application is made, and it would be outside the province of the Home Secretary to inquire into the court's reason for its decision, or to comment on what it decided.

As I said at the very beginning, I have throughout listened very carefully to my hon. Friend's arguments, and to the very forceful pleas he has put forward. I assure him that my right hon. Friend has gone very carefully into this case, but I can assure him also that we will look at it again, but on the facts as I see them, I cannot give any great hope that new facts will come to light to change the Home Secretary's decision. However, we will look very carefully into all the arguments my hon. Friend has put tonight.