Men awarded £414k against police in PI murder inquiry
THREE men who were charged with the murder of a Welsh private investigator have been awarded a total of £414,000 damages after winning a malicious prosecution action against the Metropolitan Police.
A High Court judge in London ruled yesterday that Jonathan Rees and Glenn Vian should each receive £155,000, and Garry Vian should get £104,000.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb announced the sums after Court of Appeal findings in the men’s favour relating to malicious prosecution and misfeasance in public office.
The three, who were charged with murder in 2008 following the investigation into an alleged contract killing in a pub car park, originally lost their damages claim in the High Court, but won an appeal last year.
They were prosecuted after Daniel Morgan, from Llanfrechfa, Cwmbran, was found murdered in a car park at the Golden Lion in Sydenham, southeast London, in March 1987.
Mr Morgan was struck four or five blows to the head with an axe, which
was left embedded in his face.
The men were arrested and charged in April 2008 but, in March 2011, proceedings were discontinued and not guilty verdicts entered.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb’s award included a sum to “highlight and condemn the egregious and shameful behaviour of a senior and experienced police officer”, Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook, who oversaw the investigation at the relevant time.
She said: “That the case is of public importance can hardly be doubted. In 2013 the home secretary set up an independent panel into the murder of Daniel Morgan.
“The panel has not yet reported, but its terms of reference include addressing ‘the role played by police corruption in protecting those responsible for the murder from being brought to justice and the failure to confront that corruption’.”
The evidence of a man called Gary Eaton, which was a major plank of the Crown case, had been excluded from the prospective trial because the officer was found to have compromised Mr Eaton’s 2006 debriefing.
At the High Court in 2017, Mr Justice Mitting said Mr Cook had done an act “which tended to pervert the course of justice” but his motive was to bring those he believed to be complicit in the murder to justice.
Allowing the men’s subsequent appeal from the High Court ruling, Lord Justice McCombe, sitting with two other leading judges, said Mr Cook was undoubtedly a “prosecutor” who acted maliciously.
“He knowingly put before the decision-maker a case which he knew was significantly tainted by his own wrongdoing and which he knew could not be properly presented in that form to a court.”
A hearing before Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb was held earlier this year to assess the sums to be awarded following the Court of Appeal judgment.
Announcing her decision, she said the reason a judge at the Old Bailey ruled that Mr Eaton’s evidence should be excluded was because Mr Cook “had compromised the integrity of the evidence Eaton proposed to give by initiating or allowing extensive contact with the witness in contravention of express agreements and accepted procedures”.
“Despite the ruling, at first the Crown indicated that the trial was to proceed on other evidence, but in March 2011 the judge was told that the prosecution was to be discontinued. No evidence was offered and each of the claimants obtained not guilty verdicts.”
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said “honest belief in guilt cannot justify prosecuting a suspect on false evidence”.