A campaign to clear the name of a Huddersfield man hanged for the murders of two police officers in 1951 is being supported by a leading barrister.
Former detective Steve Lawson has been campaigning to clear the name of Alfred Moore for over a decade, alongside Moore’s surviving daughters, and is now being assisted by an experienced QC who has agreed to work on a pro bono – voluntary and without payment – basis.
The barrister, who is not being named at this stage, is a specialist in serious crimes such as murder.
The QC has already carried out some paid work on the case at the request of Mr Lawson who believes Alfred Moore was wrongly hanged for the murders of Det Insp Duncan Fraser, 45, and Pc Gordon Jagger, 42, who were fatally wounded near Cockley Hill, Kirkheaton, in the early hours of July 15, 1951.
The two officers were part of a police cordon around the farmhouse home of Moore, a known burglar.
The officers were hoping to catch him red-handed returning home from burgling mills. The officers were shot trying to arrest a man as he approached the house.
The Alfred Moore case
Moore was arrested at his farmhouse a few hours after the shooting but the gun was never found. One theory is the gunman fled, leaving Moore to take the blame. He protested his innocence right to the end.
Mr Lawson, a detective in the West Yorkshire force from 1968 to 1974, previously presented evidence to the Criminal Cases Review Commission but in 2013 the Commission announced it would not be referring the conviction to the Court of Appeal.
The Commission said it had been “unable to identify new evidence that is capable of raising a real possibility that the Court of Appeal would quash the conviction.”
This week Mr Lawson said the barrister would continue to examine key areas of the case, including the nine-man identity parade at which a dying PC Jagger picked out Moore.
Mr Lawson said the barrister would be looking in detail at “several strands” of the case with a view to putting fresh evidence before the CCRC.
He said Alfred Moore’s daughters were aware of the barrister’s involvement in the case.
“His daughters are very grateful that he and others now share their beliefs in their dad’s innocence and are working to that end. Whilst optimistic, they are still understandably cautious.”
In 2013 retired judge Patrick Robertshaw, of Scissett, published a book on the case in which he concluded that the wrong man was executed.
Mr Robertshaw, whose book is called No Smoking Gun, said at the time: “By the standards of the day, it was inevitable from the moment that Alfred Moore was identified at Pc Jagger’s bedside that he was going to be convicted.
“But by the standards of today, I don’t think the case would get off the ground.
“In 1951 no-one recognised the problems with visual identification, it was regarded as strong evidence.
“Nowadays, when juries are faced with visual evidence, they are given various warnings about the problems with it.
“I don’t believe Moore’s conviction could have happened today.”
