He was the first prosecutor to use DNA evidence to convict a double murderer and has overseen some of the most high profile criminal cases in the UK. Jeanette Oldham speaks to David Blundell, the Chief Crown Prosecutor in the West Midlands, who retires this week.
It was all a bit like Life on Mars for the young criminal lawyer making his way in the rough world of law and disorder that was the Midlands in the 1970s.
Forget the Gentle Touch – and this wasn’t Morse either.
The only code that David Blundell or anyone knew then was straight out of DCI Gene Hunt’s book of rough justice.
It was a system which ended up, like so many of the criminals he prosecuted over the years, ‘banged to rights’. All but forgotten, except for echoes on our TV screens.
“I recently watched Ashes to Ashes. It was so accurate a portrayal of the police world of the 1970s that it had a feel of a documentary about it,” said Mr Blundell. “I swear that DCI Gene Hunt had a look-alike in the Nottinghamshire force – same physical presence, attitude and focus on achieving results.”
Today, 35 years after he first ventured into a courtroom in prosecutor’s shoes, Mr Blundell, 63, is the most senior and longest serving prosecutor in the country.
He is about to bow out of front-line law for good, having spent the past 13 years as Chief Crown Prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service West Midlands.
In four decades he has prosecuted thousands of cases, securing justice for countless victims.
He successfully presided over the Letisha Shakespeare and Charlene Ellis 2005 murder trial, which must be ranked as one of the most tense and important criminal trials of the century.
He is one of a handful of individuals who knows the true identity of the ‘brave souls’ who gave evidence against the killers – and like all good police officers and prosecutors, will take that knowledge to the grave.
At the beginning of his career he witnessed first-hand as the misery of the 1984/85 miners’ strike was highlighted in courtrooms across Nottinghamshire.
In his next job in Leicestershire he fought and overturned a sexist law that said a husband could not be charged with raping his wife if they were not separated.
Perhaps his most famous victory was becoming the first prosecutor to use DNA evidence and mass screening to convict a double murderer. His efforts sent one of Britain’s most notorious child sex killers, Colin Pitchfork, to jail for life.
Mr Blundell was first employed as a prosecuting solicitor by the local authority in Nottinghamshire in the early 1970s. Back then the CPS didn’t exist and the police alone charged suspects.
“The Nottinghamshire prosecuting solicitors’ department had a good working relationship with the police and the courts. Although the police charged defendants, they often asked our advice and I can only recall one occasion when we advised that a case should be dropped but the police refused,” he says. “I was in court on a daily basis. Unlike now, counsel were often in the Magistrates’ Court particularly in relation to ‘old style committals’. I once prosecuted a three-day rape with George Carman QC representing the defendant. The case was committed to Nottingham Crown Court for trial.”
Carman was a leading barrister of the 1980s and 1990s who first came to public attention in 1979 when he successfully defended the former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe after he was charged with conspiracy to murder.
“I remember being at Mansfield police station just hours after they’d arrested the Black Panther as he was known. The station was full of police and there was such a buzz about the place.”
The young Mr Blundell had the unenviable task of overseeing every single court case involving defendants charged over incidents in Nottinghamshire relating to the miners’ strike.
Nottinghamshire was, at that stage, a successful mining area and most of the miners did not want to go on strike, certainly not without a ballot.
Most of the county’s miners continued to work; and as feelings grew, they were besieged by miners from around the country. He remembers the strikers’ braziers burning against the night sky; the court talk of relatives turning against one other as one man worked and another went on strike; the insults traded on the wind as Notts’ miners were bussed past pit gates.
“Our proud boast at the end of the strike was that we had not lost a single file!”
At one stage, Mr Blundell says, the Home Office had wanted to know why suspects were not being charged with serious offences like affray. He remembers how not one was ever found guilty: “They went before juries and despite evidence against them, they all walked free. The men had the public’s support.
“It was the first case I can remember of the public interest playing a greater influencing role than the evidence at stake. We’ve seen more of that over the years.
“There were humorous moments too. One day a senior police officer arrived at a picket and ordered a junior officer to get rid of a snowman built by the striking miners.
“‘Ram it down with your car’, he said. The young policeman said ‘But sir...’. ‘Don’t you sir me’, ram it’, said the senior officer.
“So he did and wrote off his car. The miners had built the snowman around a concrete bollard. The senior cop looked round and saw nobody – the miners were on the ground, practically wetting themselves with laughter.”
Down the police station, life was changing fast for both the ‘cops and robbers’ with the likes of Mr Blundell and his colleagues playing an increasingly important role in restoring the public’s faith in the police.
He remembers dropping one case a seasoned detective wanted to bring against a student who had been caught stealing a road sign: “The officer went ballistic, but the case wasn’t in the public interest.”
In the mid 1980s Mr Blundell moved to Leicestershire.
“This was probably the most defining time of my life,” he said. “The new area was grossly understaffed. We had nine lawyers. When I left there were 22. Apparently those in charge of calculating staff levels had based Leicestershire on Leicester City Magistrates’ Court and ignored all the surrounding courts in the county.’’ In 1986 the new Crown Prosecution Service was created.
“The staff were phenomenally dedicated to the new CPS. There were many nights when we worked until 10pm.
“We did everything from file preparation, filing and logging the cases into a file index system and ledger book. No computers in those days!”
Next came the RvR matrimonial rape case, one that has been held up as a classic example of the ephemeral nature of statute or written law.
“The husband and wife in this case were planning to get divorced,’’ Mr Blundell said.
“They were living apart and one evening he telephoned his wife to say that he wanted to come round to her house to discuss the division of the matrimonial property.
“She feared it would lead to violence and told him not to come round. He ignored her but could not gain entry to the property legitimately.
“He then broke into the house through a kitchen window and attempted to rape his wife.
“But the matter was reported to the police and was investigated as an ABH (actual bodily harm). The wife had a bruise to her neck.
“The law, at that stage, was that a man could not rape his wife unless they were divorced or there was a judicial separation order. There were no such orders in this case but I decided that we would test the limits of the common law and recommended a charge of rape.
“We succeeded at the crown court based on the judge’s ruling that the common law could develop and a man could rape his wife.
“The defendant pleaded guilty and then appealed against the judge’s ruling to the Court of Appeal.
“We went to the House of Lords and eventually to the European Court at Strasbourg. We again won and, as a result, the Government decided to pass legislation confirming that a man could, in law, rape his wife.
“One of my decisions at Leicester which caused quite a stir was to discontinue a rape case. I decided that although there was significant suspicion that we had the right person, there was not a realistic prospect of conviction. But the police were far from pleased.
He continued: “A few months later in a totally separate case, one of murder and sexual assault, a defendant was charged. I did the remand in custody hearing at the magistrates’ court.
“I can recall the defence solicitor, who was one of our agents, informing me that we had got the wrong person. I very confidently told him that I didn’t think so as I had listened to the audio tapes of the interview.
“Leicestershire was a Home Office pilot for the new technique of tape recording of interviews. Albeit the police had charged the defendant, they were concerned that the case had similarities to a previous murder in the same area which had occurred about four years before.
“They strongly suspected that both murders had been committed by the same person but their concern was that the defendant would have been about 14 when the first murder occurred.
“That would have been a fairly young age for a sexual assault and murder. The police, to their credit, had heard of a new technique, that of DNA profiling. I have to be honest, I had never even heard of it. They submitted the forensic samples from the two murders to the laboratory at Loughborough.
“Their suspicion that the same person had committed the murder was confirmed but the downside was they had charged the wrong person. I therefore had to discontinue the proceedings. I was, by now, getting quite a reputation with regard to discontinuance.”
The police then set about mass screening DNA in the area where the two murders had occurred. The real murderer managed to get a friend to go along to the police station assuming the killer’s identity.
He produced a doctored passport which fooled the police and then provided a blood specimen for DNA purposes. This effectively cleared the true child killer from police suspicion.
But a conversation in a pub was overheard in which the killer’s friend told the story of how he had pretended to be his friend.
Colin Pitchfork was later jailed at Leicester Crown Court after pleading guilty to murder, rape, indecent assault and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. His victims had been schoolgirls Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth. He got 30 years.
Birmingham’s most prominent prosecutor says of DNA then: “We knew that DNA would be challenged but I asked about it and was told the ‘science is good’. I then remanded Colin Pitchfork into custody. On this occasion I was certain we had got the right person because of the DNA results.
“As soon as I heard of DNA, I recognised its potential. I recalled the previous rape case which I had discontinued.
“I contacted the police and asked them to arrange for the forensic laboratory to submit the forensic samples for DNA testing.
“The forensic scientist later told me that the samples had to be rescued from a black bin liner. They had already been placed adjacent to the incinerator and would have been destroyed that day.
“The police and the forensic science lab had, in effect, treated the samples almost as if they were fingerprints of an acquitted person. Later the law was clarified in order to ensure that samples would be retained.”
He adds: “You can imagine my delight when the DNA confirmed that the original suspect was, indeed, the rapist.”
The original suspect was arrested and charged by Blundell who gave evidence in court as to why he’d discontinued the case.
The man was convicted and sentenced to 12 years. And Mr Blundell’s reputation with Leicestershire police improved a little.
After a short spell in Yorkshire, and by now fairly experienced, Mr Blundell took on the helm of running West Midlands CPS in 1996.
“Birmingham was an amazing challenge,” he concedes. “Twenty-five to 30 courts a day and a range of cases from murder, rapes, robberies to petty thefts and public disorder.
“There were tremendous backlogs at the magistrates’ court when I first arrived. I recall at one stage that trials were being fixed for 11 to 12 months later.
“It crossed my mind that the system could break down if every defendant pleaded not guilty. For some reason they didn’t and eventually, over a period of time, the delays were reduced. The current position in the West Midlands is that cases are dealt with quicker than almost any other part of the country. Quite a turnaround.”
Without doubt the most challenging case during his time in the West Midlands was the New Year’s Eve shooting of Ellis and Shakespeare.
“The case was handled by one of our special casework lawyers, David Jeffery, although I was involved in reviewing the evidence and authorising the charges.
“The case itself had attracted massive media interest not only as a result of the facts of the case – an inter-gang dispute which had culminated in a drive-by shooting and the death of one of the defendant’s half-sisters, but also because of the techniques used by the prosecution to protect witnesses.
“These included voice distortion, voice delay, witness anonymity and screens. All were granted because the judge was satisfied that the witnesses were terrified about the repercussions of giving evidence. The defendants were convicted and gun crime plummeted in the area.
“In parts of Birmingham, Manchester and London gun crime was spiralling out of country. This case sent a message to those involved. The length of the sentences did the same.
“We’ve seen sentences go full circle in this country. At one stage life was 11 years. Now we’re back to long sentences and I believe it’s been driven by public desire.
“The trial itself was intense all the way through. I admire Timothy Raggatt, QC, who prosecuted the case. He had his finger hovering over a button the whole time the anonymous witnesses were giving evidence, ready to press if one of them said something that might have identified them.
“Pressing the button would have stopped the defendants from hearing the evidence. I admire greatly those who gave evidence. Their lives were at risk from start to finish.”
What for the future then? This most senior of prosecutors believes the current financial climate will take its toll. But ultimately he expects the public will not want nor tolerate cases brought to court at disproportionate cost.
He said: “We already have conditional cautions. I think we’ll see more of them for different types of crime, but obviously not where a suspect pleads not guilty and not for more serious crimes.
“If for example, a man breaks a shop window and admits it, and is prepared to pay for repairs and apologise to the shopkeeper, and the latter is happy with that, then I think that type of crime will be resolved without going to court. There will be a record of the offence but the offender won’t have a criminal record.
“Policing in 1973 was very much as depicted on the TV series Life on Mars. Every trial, almost without exception, was based on denials by the defendant that alleged verbal admissions made by him had been made or made in the terms reported by the officers.
“With the introduction of tape recording of interviews all that has gone and trials are completely different now in relation to the issues in dispute.
“The focus now seems to be on disclosure, on forensic evidence, etc. Investigations, certainly of the more serious cases, are far more intelligence-led.
“The disclosure of evidence – there was no disclosure worth talking of when I started – has led to the focus of the trial being completely different.
“I suspect it will move closer and closer to the American District Attorney system and the Scottish Procurator Fiscal system. The future looks bright.”
Mr Blundell now plans to spend more time with his family.
Last week, glancing at a newspaper, he saw Pitchfork’s face staring back at him. The double child killer had hit the headlines again after securing a two-year reduction in his 30-year sentence – because of his work in jail.
As one door closes, another opens...
