It was as grimly fitting as it is profoundly depressing that news of the BBC’s decision to scrap its Rough Justice series after 27 years should emerge on the same day that a man was convicted of the 1975 murder of 11-year-old Lesley Molseed in West Yorkshire, hopefully closing the book on perhaps the most heartbreaking miscarriage of justice these islands have known.  “Hopefully”, because Ronald Castree, the man sentenced to serve a minimum of 30 years in prison for the crime, claims he too has been wrongly convicted.

A day later, the Court of Appeal yesterday began hearing the appeal of another dubious conviction, that of Barri White for the murder in 2000 of Rachel Manning, highlighted by Rough Justice – one of 32 such cases featured by the programme since it was first broadcast in 1980, and which has seen 15 convictions overturned, a remarkable strike rate of 50%.

And today the Court of Appeal has ordered a retrial of Barry George, convicted on the most risible of evidence of the murder of Jill Dando in 1999.  This appeal – George’s second – was partly initiated because of a Rough Justice-style Channel 4 documentary putting pressure on the Criminal Cases Review Commission (established in 1997 at least partially because of the public pressure brought to bear on the criminal justice system by outlets such as Rough Justice) to re-open the case.

I took Criminal Law in the first year of my degree, when I was still vaguely interested in my studies (something that changed when I realised most lecturers were as clueless as me) and legal matters (something that quickly passes with any exposure to legal practice).

Having grown up being forced to watch the local news programmes for Yorkshire (despite not living in that bloody county and trying hard never to set foot in it), I was already aware of the Molseed murder, the conviction of Stefan Kiszko and the campaign protesting his innocence waged single-handedly by his mother Charlotte.  (The case was not featured by Rough Justice itself.)

Kiszko had what are today called “learning difficulties”.  He lived quietly with his mother, worked as a junior clerk in the local tax office and had never been in trouble with the police.

Under massive pressure to bring Molseed’s killer to justice, the West Yorkshire Constabulary – at the time also trying to deal with Peter Sutcliffe’s earliest attacks – seemed to fixate on Kiszko to the exclusion of all other lines of enquiry.

The police interviewed Kiszko without cautioning him, refused his request to see his mother and failed to advise him of his right to consult a solicitor.  After two days of intimidating solitary questioning, Kiszko signed a ‘confession’ that the police produced to him, telling him that if he signed he would be allowed to see his mother.

The police charged Kiszko on the basis of that ‘confession’, because of claims by some local girls that Kiszko had exposed himself to them, and because Kiszko had jotted down in a notebook the registration number of a car seen in the area around the time Lesley Molseed disappeared.

At trial, Kiszko’s defence team made a series of mistakes.  First, they failed to request an adjournment when the Crown produced thousands of pages of additional evidence on the morning of the murder trial.  They also ran a defence of diminished responsibility (that Kiszko did not authorise) caused by medicine Kiszko was receiving for a hormonal complain that was both factually incorrect and in respect of which they failed to produce any medical evidence.  Further, they failed to call medical evidence in respect of a ankle fracture shortly before Molseed disappeared that would have made it all but impossible for the grossly overweight Kiszko to scale the hillside to the spot where Lesley Molseed was killed.

Meanwhile, the prosecution team failed to disclose to Kiszko’s lawyers that the semen sample given by Kiszko contained no sperm (a result of his hormonal condition), while the semen stains recovered by forensic pathologist Ronald Outteridge from Molseed’s underwear contained normal sperm levels.  Tragically, the defence team would have had a cast-iron case had they correctly presented the defence of Kiszko’s hormonal problems, as Kiszko’s endocrinologist would have pointed out his patient was infertile.

The jury at Leeds Crown Court did not believe Kiszko’s claim that the police had bullied him and convicted him of murder by a 10-2 majority.  During sentencing, Mr Justice Park described Kiszko as a “monster” and praised the “brave and honesty” testimony of the girls who claimed to have been the victims of Kiszko’s indecent exposure.  There were widespread calls, including from Lesley Molseed’s family, for Kiszko to be executed.

Kiszko’s first appeal, in 1978, was rejected out of hand.  A convicted child killer, Kiszko was attacked repeatedly while in prison, where he developed schizophrenia.  His refusal to admit his guilt to the Molseed murder meant that he was ineligible for parole; this refusal was itself decided by prison doctors to be a consequence of his mental illness, further rendering Kiszko unfit for release.

Throughout the 1980s the increasingly frail Charlotte Kiszko campaigned ceaselessly for her son’s release.  On 26 October 1989, Charlotte Kiszko and her son’s new legal team presented a petition to the new Home Secretary, the pro-capital punishment Tory MP David Waddington – appointed that same day – for an investigation into his conviction.

It was not until March 1991, by which time Waddington had been replaced as Home Secretary and taken up a peerage, that the Home Office reopened the Kiszko case.  The enquiry discovered the prosecution’s suppression of Kiszko’s medical evidence, uncovered two witnesses who placed Kiszko miles from the scene of the crime at the time it was committed and established that the teenage girls has lied about the indecent exposure incident “for a laugh”.  In light of these findings, Home Secretary Kenneth Baker ordered an appeal, but Kiszko’s mental health deteriorated and he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in December 1991.

Stefan Kiszko’s conviction for the murder of Lesley Molseed was overturned on 18 February 2002, the second day of his appeal hearing.  In quashing Kiszko’s conviction, Lord Chief Justice Lane said:

“It has been shown that this man cannot produce sperm. This man cannot have been the person responsible for ejaculating over the girl’s knickers and skirt, and consequently cannot have been the murderer”.

The trial judge and the Molseed family publicly apologised for Kiszko’s wrongful conviction and their comments about him.  The three girls (now adults) who had admitted to making the false indecent exposure allegations against Kiszko, West Yorkshire Constabulary and Mr. Outteridge refused to follow suit.

Though technically a “free” man, Kiszko’s mental and emotional vulnerability was such that he was unable to leave hospital fully for a further nine months.  But the damage was in any event too great: a destroyed man, Kiszko suffered a heart attack and died on 23 December 1993, 18 years to the day after he signed the ‘confession’ that incarcerated him.  He was just 41 years old.  Charlotte Kiszko died four months later.

Upon his release, the Home Office had announced Kiszko would receive £500,000 in compensation for the 16 years he wrongly spent in prison.  He received an interim payment but neither Kiszko nor his mother received the full amount.

In 1994 the senior officer in charge of the Molseed murder investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Dick Holland (also a prominent detective in the Yorkshire Ripper investigation), and the now-retired Ronald Outteridge were charged with perverting the course of justice for their alleged suppression of evidence against Kiszko.  On 1 May 1995 the case against the two men was dismissed on the morbidly ironic grounds that the passage of time had made a fair trial impossible.   Holland died earlier this year; Outteridge gave evidence in the trial of Ronald Castree.

Stefan Kiszko’s defence barrister at his original trial was David Waddington QC, the same man who as Home Secretary sat on Kiszko’s appeal petition for 18 months.  He would go on to become Lord Privy Seal and the Governor of Bermuda.  He has never acknowledged any culpability in his conduct of Kiszko’s defence.

On the day after Kiszko’s conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal, the barrister originally prosecuting Kiszko, Peter Taylor QC, was appointed the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales.  He died in 1997 and also never acknowledged any fault in the case.

The publicity Rough Justice brought to the cause of convictions as unsafe and unsatisfactory as that of Stefan Kiszko has been utterly invaluable, the service it has provided immense.  The BBC’s claims that it will still investigate such matters as part of its discredited, revamped and risibly sensationalist Panorama provide little comfort.

British justice remains unwell.  But British public service broadcasting is dying.