Lord chief justice expresses ‘regret that it has taken so long for injustice to be remedied’

Three men who were convicted nearly 50 years ago on the evidence of a corrupt police officer have finally had their names cleared by senior judges.

Upholding an appeal against conviction by Winston Trew, Sterling Christie and George Griffiths – who, with Constantine Boucher, were part of the “Oval Four” – the lord chief justice, Lord Burnett, told them: “Our regret is that it has taken so long for this injustice to be remedied.”

The men were arrested in March 1972 by a group of undercover police officers at Oval Underground station and accused of “nicking handbags” on the tube. They were beaten in the police cells and then charged with attempting to steal, theft, and assault of the police.

After a five-week Old Bailey trial, at which none of the supposed theft “victims” appeared and the police relied on highly disputed “confessions”, all four were convicted and jailed for two years. The arrests occurred when “mugging” was a high-profile issue and routinely blamed on young black men. The defendants became known as the Oval Four and the case became a cause célèbre, with demonstrations and marches in south London where the men lived.

Judy Khan QC, for the appellants, described the case as “unprecedented” and told the court that Derek Ridgewell, the detective sergeant in the British Transport Police who had led the arrests, had himself been jailed after his conviction in 1978 of conspiracy to steal mailbags. She said the case had been referred to the court of appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, whose case worker Anona Bisping had carried out “thorough and detailed work”. The Crown Prosecution Service supported the appeal.

Both Trew and Christie, 69, attended the case with their families and heard Burnett, sitting with Mrs Justice McGowan and Sir Roderick Evans, declare their convictions as “unsustainable”. Griffiths, 67, who now lives abroad, was not present because of family commitments, and Boucher has not yet been traced.

Outside court a delighted Trew said: “I have lived with this case for every day of my life and I have never given up.” He said he would celebrate by “never having to think of that man Ridgewell again. That man didn’t just steal mailbags, he stole lives.” His wife, Hyacinth, said: “Now I can exhale!”

The chair of the CCRC, Helen Pitcher, said: “We are delighted for Mr Trew, Mr Christie and Mr Griffiths and pleased that the court agreed with our assessment that the misconduct of DS Ridgewell rendered their convictions unsafe. It is a good example of what we do at the CCRC.”

The successful appeal come after years of research into the case by Trew. After he was released from prison, he became a youth worker, took a degree in social sciences at the North East London Polytechnic (now the University of East London) and became a lecturer at South Bank University. He had a stroke in 2003 and, as part of his recovery, used the Freedom of Information Act to examine his case.

He discovered that Ridgewell had died in prison in 1982 while serving a seven-year sentence for conspiring to steal mailbags. Trew published his findings in the book, Black for a Cause, published in 2010.

Ridgewell, who had previously served with the Southern Rhodesian (now Zimbabwean) police, had also taken part in the arrests of other young black men who became known as the Stockwell Six, the Waterloo Four and the Tottenham Court Road Two.

The last of those cases was thrown out in 1973 by the trial judge, Gwyn Morris, who said: “I find it terrible that here in London people using public transport should be pounced upon by police officers without a word that they are police officers.”

The “mugging squad” was disbanded and Ridgewell was quietly moved to a post investigating theft on trains through which he met two career criminals with whom he would split the proceeds from stolen mailbags.

Eventually he was arrested himself and jailed. Asked by the governor at Ford prison how he became involved, Ridgewell’s response was: “I just went bent.” At the age of 37 he had a heart attack in jail and died.

Last year, another man, Stephen Simmons, who had been framed by Ridgewell for stealing mailbags in the 1970s, successfully appealed against his conviction and was assisted by Trew’s research. After that appeal, Trew applied to the CCRC for his own case to be reviewed.

The other two defendants, Griffiths and Boucher, could not be traced initially. Griffiths was in the United States when he learned of the appeal through the Guardian’s report and the CCRC added his name to the appeal.

“It changed the directions of our lives but I’m a survivor and I don’t really look at it from the point of view of being a victim,” Griffiths told the Guardian. He now lives between Jamaica, the US and London. “What I endured has tempered me,” he added. “We have a saying in Jamaica: ‘It takes iron to sharpen iron’.” Because he was younger than the other three, he was sent to borstal rather than jail.

Trew’s parents came to England in the early 1950s as part of the Windrush generation, his father having been a police officer in Jamaica. After leaving school and while on a government training course in electrical engineering, he became involved in politics.

In 1970, he joined the Fasimbas (Young Lions), the youth wing of an organisation called the South East London Parents’ Organisation. One of their roles was educating young people of Caribbean origin about their backgrounds and history, and helping with reading problems. On the night of his arrest, he had been at a political meeting in north London and was on his way home.