Assault Wendy Sewell was attacked, in Bakewell Cemetery, at lunchtime on 12 September 1973. A witness, Charles Carman, saw her enter the cemetery at about 12:50 pm. She was beaten around the head seven times with the handle of a pickaxe, which had caused severe head injuries and fractures to her skull. She had been sexually assaulted, When help arrived the woman was still conscious and she then tried to stand up, before falling and banging her head on a gravestone. She died from her injuries in
Chesterfield Royal Hospital two days later.
Trial The 17-year-old cemetery groundskeeper who found the body, Stephen Downing, was immediately suspected of committing the attack. He told police he wanted to wash blood from his hands, at which point he was arrested. He later told police that he had found Sewell lying on the ground, covered in blood, and that her blood got on his clothes because she shook her head. After several hours of this treatment, Downing agreed to sign a confession. At this point Sewell had not died, and he was only charged with the lesser crime of assault. After he confessed to the assault it was revealed that Sewell had died, and Downing's charge was elevated to murder. Downing retracted his confession soon after, No full transcript of the trial exists, but it is known that, in summing up, the judge drew attention to Downing's admission during the trial of having indecently assaulted Sewell as she lay injured in the cemetery. He had also only begun to claim his confession to the murder was not genuine several weeks after he was originally charged. He said he had only confessed because he thought that she had not been seriously injured and would not die. By a unanimous verdict, and after only 1 hour of deliberations, the jury found Downing guilty of murder. The court felt that her evidence was not credible and secure enough to allow an appeal against the conviction. After the appeal was rejected, it was widely accepted that Downing was guilty, and the case slipped into obscurity for many years. During the Derbyshire Police's re-investigation in 2002, this witness was re-interviewed and accompanied back to the cemetery location. She reaffirmed that the fully grown trees, which have since been felled, would have obstructed her line of sight. She also revealed the knowledge that she is, and was at the time, short sighted. The witness, who was 15 years old at the time of the murder, was unable to give an adequate reason for why she came forward with her original evidence. The editor,
Don Hale, took up the case and along with Downing's family ran a campaign. As part of the campaign, Sewell was made out to be responsible
for causing her own rape and murder through ongoing accusations of her being
promiscuousincluding being dubbed the "
Bakewell Tart". Hale found that the murder weapon, a pickaxe handle, was on display at Derby Museum. He organised his own modern forensic examination to be made of it. Mr Downing's fingerprints were not found although there was a palm print from an as yet unidentified person. However, the print could have come to be on the handle at any point in time, with it being contaminated over the years it was stored. It had not been stored in protected conditions and had been handled by countless individuals, meaning the print could have been entirely unrelated to the crime. As a result of this campaign, along with Downing's continued claims of innocence, the case was referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 1997. He was released on appeal in 2001, after 27 years in prison. The following year, the
Court of Appeal overturned Downing's conviction, finding the confession evidence to be unreliable.
The second appeal During the second appeal, held on 15 January 2002, the
Court of Appeal accepted many of the reasons that were put forward by Hale and others for believing the conviction was unsafe. Julian Bevan, counsel for the Crown, accepted two arguments put forward by the defence. The first was that Downing's confession should not have been allowed to go before a jury. The confession was deemed unsafe because Downing had been questioned for eight hours, during which the police shook him and pulled his hair to keep him awake; because he wasn't formally cautioned that what he said may be used in evidence against him; and because he wasn't given a solicitor. The Crown also agreed with the defence argument that more recent knowledge of blood-splattering patterns meant the prosecution's claim that the blood could only have been found on the clothes of the attacker was questionable. Blood-staining experts, however, disagreed on whether the blood-staining was not from Downing attacking Sewell, and one concluded in 2002 that: "The pattern of bloodstaining on Downing's clothing supports the assertion that Stephen Downing battered Mrs Sewell prior to handling and kneeling by her body".
Lord Justice Pill said that the Court of Appeal did not have to consider whether Downing had proved that he was innocent, but whether the original conviction was fair – "
The question for [the Court of Appeal’s] consideration is whether the conviction is safe and not whether the accused is guilty". What the defence had proved was that there was reasonable doubt about the "reliability of the confessions made in 1973". His Lordship said: "The court cannot be sure the confessions are reliable. It follows that the conviction is unsafe. The conviction is quashed." ==Later events==