Derek Bentley
| Derek Bentley | |
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| Born |
Derek William Bentley 30 June 1933 Bristol, England |
| Died | 28 January 1953 (aged 19) Wandsworth Prison, London, England |
Derek William Bentley (30 June 1933 – 28 January 1953) was an English man who was hanged for the murder of a policeman, which was committed in the course of a burglary attempt. The murder was said at the time to have been committed by a friend and accomplice of Bentley's, Christopher Craig, then aged 16, but whether he had fired the fatal shot was later called into question. Bentley was convicted as a party to murder, by the English law principle of common purpose, "joint enterprise". The jury at the trial found Bentley guilty based on the prosecution's interpretation of the ambiguous phrase "Let him have it" (Bentley's alleged instruction to Craig), after the judge, Lord Chief Justice Goddard, had described Bentley as "mentally aiding the murder of Police Constable Sidney Miles". Goddard then sentenced Bentley to death: at the time, no other sentence was possible. The Bentley case became a cause célèbre and led to a 45-year-long campaign to win Derek 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.
Derek Bentley entered Norbury Manor Secondary Modern School in 1944, after failing the eleven-plus examination. In March 1948 Bentley and another boy were arrested for theft. In September 1948, he was sentenced to serve three years at Kingswood Approved School, near Bristol.
Bentley was released from Kingswood school on 28 July 1950, and was a recluse for the rest of the year. In March 1951, Bentley was employed by a furniture removal firm but was forced to leave the job after injuring his back in March 1952. In May 1952, Bentley was taken on by the Croydon Corporation as a dustbin man, but in July 1952 was demoted to street sweeping for unsatisfactory performance. Two months after that, he was sacked by the Corporation.
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