Appeal judges are due to hear the 12th appeal of a wrongful conviction related to the corrupt and racist British Transport Police officer Detective Sergeant Derek Ridgewell. Errol Campbell will have his cases posthumously heard by the Court of Appeal this week – nearly half a century after he was imprisoned on the basis of a disgraced police officer’s evidence.
In 1977, Campbell was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment and a further six months at the Central Criminal Court after being convicted of conspiracy to steal and theft from the Bricklayers Arms Goods Depot, where he was working for British Rail.
Errol Campbell with his wife Lucy Henrietta Daley in 1958
According to the legal charity APPEAL, the conviction resulted from an investigation led by disgraced DS Derek Ridgewell and involving his corrupt colleagues Detective Constable Douglas Ellis and Detective Constable Alan Keeling.
- You can read about the Oval Four and Stockwell Six cases related to the racist and corrupt practices of DS Ridgewell elsewhere on the Justice Gap
- Read Winston Trew of the Oval Four writing about Ridgewell on the Justice Gap (here)
In February, the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the cases to the Court of Appeal on the basis of the facts and details of the convictions in 1980 of DS Derek Ridgewell, DC Douglas Ellis, and DC Alan Keeling. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed in March that it would not be contesting Campbell’s appeals on the basis that the case was ‘materially indistinguishable from that of Peterkin and Mehmet‘.
