Derek Bentley
British man hanged but later pardoned (1933–1953)
Derek William Bentley (30 June 1933 – 28 January 1953) was a British man who was hanged for being the accomplice of a murder of a policeman during an attempted burglary. His accomplice, Christopher Craig, then aged 16, was convicted 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 the bringing of deadly weapons. The outcome of the trial, and Home Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe's refusal 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. Bentley was sentenced to death. He was executed despite a recommendation for mercy by the jury.
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. 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.
Early life
Bentley was born to William and Lilian Bentley, who raised their family in Blackfriars, London.
“Derek Bentley” enters the record as british man hanged but later pardoned (1933–1953). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Derek, Bentley and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Derek Bentley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.