On April 12, Home Secretary Jack Straw said that the...

On April 12, Home Secretary Jack Straw said that the conviction of Derek Bentley, who was found guilty of murder and hanged in 1953, was overturned on the basis of mistakes by the trial judge and for this reason his case fell outside the compensation scheme. The family of Derek Bentley were told that they were not entitled to compensation, despite the quashing of his conviction by the Court of Appeal in 1998. Bentley was 19 when he was convicted of the rooftop shooting in south London of a policeman and sentenced to death by hanging, although he did not fire the fatal shot. The jury was not told that Bentley had a mental age of 11 and controversy over the case helped to fuel the campaign for the abolition of capital punishment. After a long fight to clear his name, relatives finally learned, in July 1998, that the conviction had been overturned because the trial judge's summing up and direction to the jury had denied him a fair trial. The Bentley family had applied for compensation within days of that decision.