Two found guilty in race murder

AFP/London

GUILTY: Gary Dobson (left) and David Norris

A British jury found two white men guilty yesterday of the murder 18 years ago of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in an unprovoked attack that became a defining moment in race relations in Britain. Gary Dobson, 36, and David Norris, 35, had denied involvement in the knife attack on the 18-year-old at a bus stop in Eltham, southeast London in April 1993, by a gang of white youths. But on the third day of their deliberations following an emotionally-charged six-week trial, the jury at the Old Bailey court in London found them both guilty on the basis of new forensic evidence. As he was led from the court, Dobson—who will be sentenced along with Norris today—protested his innocence, shouting: “You have condemned an innocent man here, I hope you can live with yourselves.” His mother, Pauline, called out from the public gallery as her son was led away: “He didn’t kill that man.” Lawrence’s parents Doreen and Neville, who have campaigned tirelessly for justice for their son, struggled to contain their emotions as the jury read out their verdict but wept as the news sank in. Duwayne Brooks, Lawrence’s best friend who had been with him on the night of the murder but managed to escape the gang, tweeted: “Some justice at last.” The verdict brings some closure to one of Britain’s most high-profile unsolved murder cases, which remained in the public eye both for its brutality and the part it played in the development of race relations. A major inquiry into the handling of the case in 1999 found “institutional racism” within the police and led to significant changes in the way murders involving black victims are investigated. The prosecution’s case hinged on new forensic evidence unearthed by a cold case team using techniques unavailable to the original detectives, which linked the suspects to Lawrence through blood, hair and tiny fibres on their clothing. Lawyers for Dobson and Norris had unsuccessfully argued that the evidence was the result of contamination by police because it had been badly stored. The pair were among five men arrested for Lawrence’s murder in the weeks after the attack, but state prosecutors concluded that there was insufficient evidence to progress with murder charges for any of them. In September 1994, Lawrence’s family began a private prosecution against Dobson and two others, Neil Acourt and Luke Knight, but it collapsed in 1996 and the trio were acquitted.  Nine years later, the law was changed to allow suspects to be tried twice for the same crime when there is new evidence, clearing the way for a fresh prosecution of Dobson. Senior officers from Scotland Yard said they would continue working to find the other members of the gang that attacked Lawrence. “We do, of course, acknowledge that there were five people involved on the night that Stephen was murdered,” said Acting Deputy Commissioner Cressida Dick of London’s Metropolitan Police. “We have not brought all those people to justice. So if we get new evidence, if we have further opportunities, we will respond to that... We don’t see this as the end of the road.” She added that it was a “matter of huge regret” that it had taken 18 years to convict anyone for the murder, but insisted the police had changed. “We’ve transformed the way we do investigate homicide and I like to think that where we are now exemplifies how we’ve changed in terms of the way we investigate,” she said. An inquiry into Scotland Yard’s handling of the case by senior judge William Macpherson, published in 1999, gave a damning assessment of the “institutional racism” within the London force and policing in general. The report is regarded by many as a defining moment in British race relations and one of the key moments in the modern history of criminal justice.