The final member of the so-called Stockwell Six, a group of friends accused of trying to rob a corrupt police officer more than 50 years ago, could have his name cleared after the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred his conviction to the Court of Appeal.
Ronald De Souza was with five other young black men who were all arrested on the London Underground while on a night out on February 18 1972.
The group, who became known as the Stockwell Six, were accused of trying to rob British Transport Police (BTP) officer Detective Sergeant Derek Ridgewell and were put on trial at the Old Bailey largely on his word.
All six pleaded not guilty, but all except one were convicted and sent to jail or Borstal, despite telling jurors that police officers had lied and subjected them to violence and threats.
The CCRC, which investigates miscarriages of justice, has referred Mr De Souza’s conviction for attempted robbery to the Court of Appeal, after his co-defendants, Paul Green, Courtney Harriot, Cleveland Davidson and Texo Johnson, had their names cleared in 2021.
The commission appealed for Mr De Souza to come forward and an application for a review of his conviction was received in December.
“The CCRC has concluded that the Court of Appeal is likely to take the same approach to Mr De Souza’s conviction as it did for his co-defendant Mr Johnson, his case also being ‘materially indistinguishable’ from those of his co-defendants and other related convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal,” the body said.
“Therefore there is a real possibility the Court of Appeal will now quash Mr De Souza’s conviction.”
The convictions were overturned on the basis of new information rendering the evidence of Ridgewell and his colleagues unreliable, the CCRC said.
Ridgewell, who previously served in the South Rhodesian, now Zimbabwean, police force, was involved in a number of high-profile and controversial cases in the early 1970s and was convicted of stealing in 1980.
Mr De Souza’s solicitor, Jenny Wiltshire, said: “While it is good news that the CCRC has referred Mr De Souza’s conviction to the Court of Appeal, it is a tragedy that is has taken over fifty years for the miscarriage of justice he suffered to start to be rectified.
“Derek Ridgewell, the corrupt police officer at the heart of this case and others like it, was convicted in 1980. It was at that point that Ridgewell’s employer, British Transport Police, should have immediately reviewed every criminal investigation in which he was involved.
“But it didn’t. As a result it has taken half a century for the individual people victimised by him to come forward and fight to clear their names.
“Nor was DS Ridgewell’s corruption confined to only the Stockwell Six and Oval Four cases. Indeed, I am not confident that all his victims have yet been identified.”
In 1972 Ridgewell, who was wearing plain clothes, claimed the group of young men, who boarded the train at Stockwell station in south London, attempted to rob him, before he fought back and arrested them with a team of undercover officers.
Mr De Souza, Mr Johnson, Mr Harriot, Mr Green and Mr Davidson were convicted, but Everett Mullins was acquitted because it was shown that his reading ability was not good enough for him to have read and fully understood his signed statement, which was written for him by Ridgewell.
Ridgewell’s involvement in a string of controversial cases in the early 1970s culminated in the 1973 acquittals of the so-called Tottenham Court Road Two, two young Jesuits studying at Oxford University.
Ridgewell was moved into a department investigating mailbag theft, where he joined with two criminals with whom he split the profits of stolen mailbags.
He was caught and jailed for seven years, and died of a heart attack in prison in 1982 at the age of 37.
In recent years his corruption has led to a series of wrongful convictions being overturned by the Court of Appeal.
In January 2018, Stephen Simmons’ 1976 conviction for stealing mailbags was quashed, after he discovered that Ridgewell was jailed for a similar offence two years after his own conviction.
In December 2019, three members of the Oval Four, who were arrested at Oval Underground station in 1972 and accused by Ridgewell’s “mugging squad” of stealing handbags, also had their convictions overturned.
Winston Trew, Sterling Christie and George Griffiths were all sentenced to two years, later reduced to eight months on appeal, after a five-week trial at the Old Bailey.
In March 2020, the final member of the Oval Four, Constantine “Omar” Boucher, also had his name cleared, prompting calls for a “wholesale review” of all cases linked to Ridgewell.
The CCRC urges anyone who believes they are a victim of a miscarriage of justice, convicted in a case involving Ridgewell, to contact them.
