Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

Roger Sylvester - inquest verdict likely to be quashed

Socialist Resistance no20  |  page 6

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

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O// Roger Sylvester died in police custody in January 1999, in Tottenham, North London. He was held down for 20 minutes in a padded room in a psychiatric hospital and was in a coma for 7 days before being pronounced dead on January 18 1999.

After a four-year long campaign by his family and supporters, including fellow trade unionists from UNISON, an Inquest was finally held last October and reached a verdict of unlawful Killing.

Eight police officers, who had been suspended following this verdict challenged the ruling. After a three-day hearing, with the support of the Police Federation.

Mr Justice Collins said on November 5 that the inquest verdict should be quashed. He criticised the coroners summing up at the inquest and also said that some of the reasons given by the 11-strong jury for their verdict were inconsistent with others. He will report more fully later.

Ken Fero, of United Family and Friends Campaign said that Mr Sylvester's parents, Rupert and Shelia were "distraught" at the judge's remarks. He said the campaign would spend the next few days deciding what to do next. "It's -me a very strong family.

It took them four years to get the verdict of unlawful killing and another year walting for this case, and I don't think they are likely to stop noW."