The flawed PC Blakelock murder trial

The prosecution of Nicky Jacobs for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock should never have been pursued, Stafford Scott, co-founder of the Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign, writes in today's Guardian.

Two of the witnesses, given the pseudonyms John Brown and Rhodes Levin, had previously been paid thousands of pounds by the police as a 'reward' for their help in the earlier prosecutions, he points out.

Levin had admitted to naming others as suspects simply because he did not like them. Brown told the police in 1993: 'It's very hard for me because... I can't tell the difference between them. To me a black man is a black man'.

Scott also challenges the claimed parallels between the Stephen Lawrence case and the murder of PC Blakelock:

'While many commentators have tried to draw parallels between this case and that of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, in that many years have elapsed between the killing and the trial, no such parallels exist. In the Lawrence case evidence existed but police failed to gather it or act on it; in the Jacobs case no such evidence ever existed.'