A former police officer who claims to have been wrongly convicted returns today to the Court of Appeal a decade after an independent investigation into his case appeared to vindicate him. Last year Danny Major spoke to the Justice Gap about his fury at an almost decade-long delay by the Criminal Cases Review Commission sent his case back to the Appeal.

Danny Major claims to have been ‘fitted up’ by fellow officers for a serious assault on a drunk detainee in the Leeds Bridewell custody suite in 2003. His case has featured extensively on the Justice Gap. He believes that one of those officers panicked after the boy he attacked, Sean Rimmington, had to be rushed to hospital by ambulance. Thinking he was going to die, Major believes Liston and two other colleagues pinned the blame on a young expendable officer (Danny Major).

• Justice Gap editor, Jon Robins covered the case for Private Eye, issue 1686, October 23 (Custody Battle). The case features in Jon’s book Guilty Until Proven Innocent, Biteback 2018

It’s 20 years since Major was sent to prison, serving four months. Private Eye reported on Danny’s hopes a year later that missing CCTV footage would imminently clear his name (Knacker vs Knacker, December 3, 2007). He always maintained that it was impossible such an incident could have taken place in a modern police station decked out with numerous CCTV cameras without being recorded – he reckons there were as many as thirteen cameras.

Tapes were disclosed halfway through the trial – but (as reported by The Eye) too late to help Danny Major. After a failed appeal, he first applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC). The watchdog rejected the application after sitting on it for four years.

The case raises serious concerns about the conduct of the watchdog.  Supported by parents Eric Major, a former copper who served 32 years with West Yorkshire Police, and Bernadette – the pair remortgaged their house to cover legal fees –  the Majors persuaded West Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner to commission a review which was conducted by Greater Manchester Police in 2013. Ironically, the CCRC has unique statutory powers to commission an independent police force to investigate a case – it very rarely uses it.

GMP’s Operation Lamp into the shenanigans of its neighbouring force was published in 2015. Its findings were described as ‘explosive’ by Ian Hanson, chairman of the Greater Manchester Police Federation (as was exclusively reported on the Justice Gap). ‘In 30 years in the police service I have never seen a report as critical of one police force by another force,’ Hanson told the Justice Gap. ‘The report vindicates Danny Major and what he has been saying for 12 years.’

Operation Lamp accepted Danny’s account of the incident and found Liston ‘either deliberately or inadvertently misled the court’. It was highly critical of West Yorkshire Police’s own investigation and its lead officer who showed ‘poor investigative rigour and a mindset that could be described as “verification bias”’. It revealed that he failed to recover four of six VHS video tapes and failed to interview the officer who ran the control room and monitored CCTV on the night.

Back in 2015, Danny was still clinging on to the hope that he could pick up a policing career cut short by corrupt colleagues and recover his life. GMP also had the required ‘fresh evidence’ to send the case back to the courts. As Ian Hanson put it: ‘The issue now is how quickly this can be propelled to the Court of Appeal – for Danny to have his name cleared and for the conviction to be quashed.’

Sadly, they hadn’t banked on the inaction of the CCRC. Despite having their job done for them, the watchdog sat on the case for the best part of the decade while Danny and his young family had to wait it out. The CCRC in its words ‘decided that it was not possible to progress its review’ until the criminal investigations into Liston et al to be completed. Operation Redhill, as it is known, is still underway.

The CCRC finally sent Danny Major’s case back in March 2025 and he now has a court date set for November 12 for the appeal. Major blames the watchdog for wrecking his mental health, ruining his career prospects and allowing the officers responsible for fitting him up to progress their own careers.

Despite the original prosecution case being comprehensively demolished and criminal charges being investigated for the officers that stitched the young Danny up, the CPS has announced that it intends to fight the appeal causing Danny and his young family yet more misery, as well as potentially wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ pounds.

The prosecuting barrister is John Price KC known by some at the Bar as ‘the Reverend’ for his evangelical determination to breathe life into hopeless cases and a willingness to fight for retrials decades after original now discredited trial – see the case of Justin Plummer. Plummer had his conviction overturned in 2021 only to be re-convicted in a disastrous retrial lasting longer than the original trial which was promptly overturned because of the self evident weakness of the prosecution case (the main argument being a ‘confession’ Plummer was supposed to have made to a long dead cell mate). Price unsuccessfully pushed for a retrial in the case of Oliver Campbell. Campbell had his conviction overturned in 2025 but only in the most begrudging way with Lord Justice Holroyde claiming it was ‘a finely balanced’ decision to reject Price’s call for a retrial – many supporters believe Campbell (severely brain damaged as a baby) was highly vulnerable and  a clear cut miscarriage of justice (more here). The Reverend only conceded the case against Andrew Malkinson, who spent 17 years in prison for a rape he didn’t commit, at the very last moment – when his lawyers commissioned new DNA testing finding a match identifying the true perpetrator in October 2022.

Last year, Danny Major told the Justice Gap of the distress he claims has been unnecessarily caused to him and his young family in correcting the injustice. He argues that CCRC could have sent the case back in 2015. ‘If this had been addressed promptly, my name could have been cleared nearly a decade ago,’ Major said. ‘The suspects in the case could have been dealt with and might already have been released from prison by now. The delays have all but destroyed any chance of me rebuilding my career and have taken a terrible toll on my mental health. Tragically, several family members who supported my case have not lived to see my name cleared.’

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