Stephen Ward Was Innocent, OK

The Case for Overturning His Conviction

Geoffrey Robertson

• Publisher: Biteback Publishing
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781849546904
• eBook ISBN: 9781849547024
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

In the summer of '61 John Profumo, Minister for War, enjoyed a brief affair with Christine Keeler... Late in the afternoon of Wednesday 31 July 1963, Dr Stephen Ward was convicted at the Old Bailey on two counts alleging that he lived on the earnings of a prostitute. He was not in the dock but comatose in hospital. The previous night he had attempted suicide, because (as he said in a note) 'after Marshall's [the judge's] summing up, I've given up all hope'. He died on Saturday 3 August, without regaining consciousness. Many observers of the proceedings thought the convictions did not reflect the evidence and that the trial was unfair, and this book will show that it breached basic standards of justice. Geoffrey Robertson brings his forensic skills and a deeply felt sense of injustice to the case at the heart of the Profumo affair, the notorious scandal that brought down a government.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1: How to Quash an Old Conviction
• 2: Backstory
• 3: Hunting Up Evidence
• 4: The Trial of Stephen Ward
• 5: Grounds of Appeal
• 6: Over to the CCRC
• Note on Sources
• Brief Chronology
• Appendix A: Statement by Sir David Tudor-Price
• Appendix B: Lord Goodman’s Opinion
• Appendix C: Bernard Levin on Ward’s trial
• Appendix D: Questions in the House of Lords, 18 July 2013
• Plates
• Copyright