Derek William Bentley (30 June 1933 – 28 January 1953) was a British man who was hanged for the murder of a policeman during a burglary attempt. Christopher Craig, then aged 16, a friend and accomplice of Bentley, was accused of the murder. Bentley was convicted as a party to the crime under the English law principle of joint enterprise, as the burglary had been committed in mutual understanding and bringing deadly weapons. The outcome of the trial, and Home Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe's failure to grant clemency to Bentley, were highly controversial.
The jury at the trial found Bentley guilty based in large part on the prosecution's interpretation of the ambiguous phrase "Let him have it", Bentley's alleged exhortation to Craig, which prosecutors argued was an order to shoot and defence counsel argued was an order to surrender; this after Lord Chief Justice Goddard had described Bentley as "mentally aiding" the murder. Goddard sentenced Bentley to be hanged, despite a recommendation for mercy by the jury: under the Judgment of Death Act 1823, the judge's discretion at sentencing was taken away and therefore no other sentence was possible.
The Bentley case became a cause célèbre and led to a 40-year-long campaign to win Bentley a posthumous pardon, which was granted in 1993, and then a further campaign for the quashing of his murder conviction, which occurred in 1998.[1] Bentley's case is thus considered a case of miscarriage of justice alongside that of Timothy Evans, and pivotal in the successful campaign to abolish capital punishment in the United Kingdom.
^Luu, Chi (6 September 2017). "Sentenced to Death (and Other Tales from the Dark Side of Language)". JSTOR Daily. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
Derek William Bentley (30 June 1933 – 28 January 1953) was a British man who was hanged for the murder of a policeman during a burglary attempt. Christopher...
notorious cases of this type was the 1952 case in England involving DerekBentley, a mentally challenged man who was in police custody when his sixteen-year-old...
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undertook several contentious executions, including Timothy Evans, DerekBentley and Ruth Ellis and executions for high treason—William Joyce (also known...
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series Ambulance. He first rose to prominence for his portrayal of DerekBentley in the 1991 film, Let Him Have It. His television performance in Our...
is acknowledged to be a miscarriage of justice. Along with those of DerekBentley and Ruth Ellis, the case played a major part in the removal of capital...
(Lord Haw-Haw) (3 January 1946) John George Haigh (10 August 1949) DerekBentley (28 January 1953) Alfred Charles Whiteway (22 December 1953) Guenther...
Lindbergh kidnapping and the murder convictions of Timothy Evans and DerekBentley. He also campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty in the United...
respect of federal and provincial offences. In the important case of DerekBentley, a court found that this royal prerogative power is "probably" entirely...
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Aircraft Recognition Handbook DerekBentley (1933–1953), Englishman hanged for murder and subsequently pardoned Derek Chauvin (born 1976), American former...
convictions and subsequent hangings, such as the notorious case of DerekBentley.[citation needed] The commission concluded that unless there was overwhelming...
compensation was the first award to a family for a person wrongfully hanged. DerekBentley was a learning disabled young man who was executed in 1953. He was convicted...
issue of routine arming in Great Britain was raised after the 1952 DerekBentley case, in which a constable was shot dead and a sergeant severely wounded...
losing to Robert Duvall in Tender Mercies. He played the father of DerekBentley (Christopher Eccleston) in the 1991 film Let Him Have It. And for an...
1930s William Herbert Wallace 1950s DerekBentley Timothy Evans Mahmood Hussein Mattan 1970s Jonathan Rosenhead Murder of Maxwell Confait Oval Four Andrew...
awarded the George Cross for his heroism in chasing the armed robbers DerekBentley and Christopher Craig on 2 November 1952. The pair had broken into a...
Bentley University is a private university in Waltham, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1917 as a school of accounting and finance in Boston's Back Bay...
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