🔥 Justice Alert: Why Tom Dunkley’s conviction is unsafe and the CCRC do not want to know

Tom, a promising boxer, in happier times

This will probably be the last time I write on this forum about Tom’s case. I have nothing else to say and others must make up their own minds on who to believe. The articles of Dr Naughton and Bill Robertson about miscarriages of justice are far more articulate than my efforts and I urge the justice ministers of all parties to read them.  I take comfort knowing I have tried my best and in the fact that Tom is well liked, that there are many people who sympathise with him and that he is finally well, if not cured.

In speaking out about Tom’s case, I have been mindful that others have been silenced by having evidence locked up for seventy years in what appears to be a gross misuse of power. Although in this climate of cover-ups and super -injunctions I don’t know why I’m surprised.

Am I doing the right thing? Does my constant, public kicking at their door only strengthen their resolve to keep my boy locked up for another nineteen years? If so, I will not see him free in my lifetime because despite the rest of the world moving into the 21^st century the mindset of the Justice system is still Lord Denning’s  ‘desire to uphold societal norms even at the expense of individual rights’.

All I have been able to do is exercise my right to tell Tom’s story to as many people as I can; to add him to the long list of all the other wrongly convicted citizens of this country. How long must that list get until there is a sensible discussion about what is going wrong? In 2020, the US changed the law on majority verdicts for serious cases and I beg the Justice minister to consider this.

Below is a full copy of the report by the pathologist for the defence, Dr David Rouse. It was he who had to correct Professor Vanezis several times about stabbing, although this didn’t prevent the judge from repeating it in her summing up.

A quick Google search about Dr Rouse revealed that, unlike Professor Vanezis, there are no negative results; no dodgy post mortems, no complaints about evidence being ignored and no trying to mislead a jury. 

The relevant findings to Shaun CUMMINS can be summarised as follows:

1. Body separated into 10 parts but appeared to consist of a male 176-181cm in height and of a combined weight of 147kg and a BMI of 46kg/m2 (i.e. severe obesity).

2. There were marks related to his known physical state including the presence of a stoma and related abdominal surgery as well as the ulcers over his buttocks described as 12cm x 8cm on the right and 12cm on the left.

3. There was evidence of natural disease including right upper lobe consolidation of the lung, with histological changes consistent with bronchopneumonia; low grade infective changes in the kidneys and possible bladder inflammation in keeping with a urinary tract infection. There was evidence of significant bleeding into the gut (melaena).

4. No antemortem marks of injury were identified.

5. No internal marks of antemortem injury were identified.

1. The initial examination showed a body with early features of decomposition despite freezing indicating death having occurred some days prior to insertion into the freezer although it should be noted that sectioning the body accelerates the decomposition process.

2. The body had been dismembered, but there was no evidence to indicate that any of the cuts were made before death.

3. No external marks of antemortem injury were noted with no evidence of any trauma to account for the death (in terms of asphyxiation or head injuries). There were no antemortem fractures of any bones identified.

4. No toxicological cause of death has been identified. The toxicology identified the presence of therapeutic amounts of drugs prescribed (amitriptyline, dihydrocodeine & gabapentin). There was also no pathological evidence to indicate that the drugs had been administered forcibly (i.e. grip marks or marks of restraint to the upper limbs or the presence of marks around the mouth).

5. There was evidence of a chest infection (bronchopneumonia) with consolidation of the upper lobe of the right lung, and histological changes confirming the macroscopic (naked-eye) appearances, which would be sufficient to be the cause of death.

6. The deceased had sufficient other disease processes to account for the development of a chest infection through natural means, including his severe obesity, paraplegia and the presence of decubitus ulceration (pressure sores on the buttocks). There was also a possible urinary tract infection, which can also predispose to a terminal chest infection.

7. The lay witness evidence would suggest that when last seen he had deteriorated over some days prior to the presumed date of death. WAKELEY refers to his urine being a “bit gungy” on the 30th August. HATFIELD refers to him on the 31st August as not being his usual self and having to concentrate on forming sentences. BOGAARD on the 1st September described him as being confused and weak. (The puffiness of the face referred to by Professor VANEZIS in fact related to DUNKLEY). Such changes would be in keeping with the development of a significant infection. It is of note that CUMMINS refused a call to a doctor.

8. Based on the absence of trauma and toxicology and the presence of sufficient natural disease to account for his death, the logical analysis must be that the cause of death is from natural causes (based upon the balance of probabilities, which is the standard for the determination of the cause of death). The identification of the precise cause of death has been prevented because of the decomposition, but a cause of death as stated below would be in keeping with the post-mortem findings (this does not exclude other stated causes from being as valid):

I confirm that I understand my duty to the Court and that I have complied with that duty and will continue to do so. I confirm that in so far as the facts stated in my report are within my own knowledge I have made clear which they are and I believe them to be true and that the opinions I have expressed represent my true and complete professional opinion.

The Truth, The Whole Truth

The pathology report of Professor Venezis also states the many diseases suffered by Mr Cummins. Of course, that didn’t suit the prosecution. A murder had to be ‘proved’, so some other cause had to be suggested — even though it was not in evidence. After all, why would anyone in his right mind do what Tom did to a dead body?

I welcome the fact that Helen Pitcher and Karen Kneller have resigned. I never believed that they did any investigation into Tom’s case. After nearly two years all they had was that Tom had lied about Mr Cummins’ whereabouts when asked. They either dismissed or ignored everything else, asserting that it should have been brought up by counsel in the trial. This, by the way, is one of the arguments being used in the Lucy Letby case. In other words, a barristers mistake makes no difference to his own career or reputation but costs the unfortunate person he represented everything.

In 2015 at Long Lartin, Tom had a psychotic episode that left him shaking and clearly distressed on a staircase where other prisoners found him and demanded he be sent to the medical wing. He had removed himself from the kitchen when the voices in his head told him to put a fellow prisoner’s head in the deep fat fryer. This is all recorded in his medical notes. Three psychiatrists were called because if they all agreed Tom could be sent to a mental health facility. The opinion of Dr Kenny-Herbert, a world renowned psychiatrist, was that Tom was very ill indeed and probably had been for five years or more. Dr Tovey agreed and is still treating Tom ten years later. Dr Gehlan, after speaking to Tom for fifteen minutes or so felt that he might be ‘faking it’: guess which part of that the CCRC cherry picked?

It is interesting that it takes three experienced medical professionals to judge a patient’s mental capacity but only one barrister. Perhaps, he could tell junior psychiatrists how he does it and save them the tedium of attending years’ worth of lectures.

Incidentally, I recently discovered that we are related by marriage to Dr Henry Yellowlees, an eminent psychiatrist who gave expert evidence in many court cases including that of John Haigh, the so-called acid bath murderer. One of his books states:

 “The risk of an innocent man being hanged is infinitely small. The risk of a mentally ill man being hanged is very real. Psychiatry is a popular butt and laughing stock. It is the one subject in which the man in the street and the man in the Court discounts training and experience and ventilates his own opinions with complete confidence”

Dr Yellowlees wrote this in 1956; substitute the word ‘hanged’ for ‘savage prison sentence’ and it is clear very little has changed in seventy years.

I am honestly sick and tired of ‘investigative journalists’ putting their own spin on what happened and I refuse to allow the lies to grow. Two TV documentaries have now been made, no doubt making people like Donal MacIntyre a lot of money for regurgitating what they’d read in the newspapers.

 I was the one ferrying Tom to the shops and the bank for Mr Cummins. I was the one who lost sleep over what was happening to Tom. Tom’s partner was the one who went to the doctor with him and who cried when she heard about the suicide attempts. It was Tom’s brothers who trawled the hospital corridors looking for him when he stopped answering his phone. Did any so called investigative journalist ask what we or anyone else thought about what had happened? Did they, in fact, do any investigating?

Before meeting Mr Cummins, Tom had always worked, was not in debt and was looking forward to the birth of his second child. It was Tom’s boxing trainer who introduced him to Mr Cummins and he told me he deeply regretted doing so. Far from ‘targeting’ Mr Cummins in order to rob him it was Tom who was selected by a violent bully who pretended to befriend him in order to use him. It was not ‘just a bit of bullying’; Tom was regularly assaulted, his partner and children were threatened, Mr Cummins enjoyed telling Tom about acts of violence he had meted out to victims, including murder, all designed to frighten and intimidate him into doing his bidding and leading to his complete mental breakdown.

This is the truth that the prosecution didn’t want the jury to know and the defence felt was irrelevant because he had pleaded not guilty. By the time Mr Cummins had finished with him Tom was a complete wreck. If this makes uncomfortable reading for some people, I’m sorry, but I really am past the point of caring about others’ feelings. Despite that I do not want to say too much about Mr Cummins. His brother tried to convey to the jury how badly he treated people around him and the reasons he was that way but the prosecutor cut him short when he realised it didn’t fit his purpose.

In order to cast Tom in the worst possible light the amount he stole was grossly exaggerated, according to bank statements just over £11,000 was taken, less than half what the prosecution alleged when they told the jury he had ‘rinsed Mr Cummins’ bank account of £25,000’.

I have been told that this was the whole cost of a second hand car that Tom put a £500 deposit on. Tom’s family could have easily paid his debts off for him, but he didn’t want them to, convinced that the investment he’d made with Mr Cummins would prove fruitful. Of course, despite having all of the papers (paid for by me), the CCRC either ignored or (more likely) didn’t even look into this.

Tom admitted his crimes as soon as he was arrested. He has surely paid for them.

The fact that the prosecution had to resort to such tactics shows that they knew their case was weak. Why wouldn’t the CofA consider all of this and decide that the conviction was unsafe?  They might just prove to be more enlightened than the gatekeepers.

For further articles on the Tom Dunkley case see: