Former gang member, 30, who served 12 years behind bars for fatal shooting of teenager is cleared on appeal

A former gang member who has served 12 years of a life sentence in prison for shooting dead a teenager has been cleared of murder after an appeal. Dwaine Simeon George has always denied being involved in the killing of 18-year-old Daniel Dale in Miles Platting in east Manchester.

Mr George, now 30, had his murder conviction quashed by judges at the Court of Appeal today after they ruled it was 'no longer safe.' Sir Brian Leveson, President of the Queen's Bench Division, quashed the conviction.

He said 'new expert analysis of the evidence 'might reasonably have affected the decision of the trial jury.'

Mr George was convicted in 2001 at Preston Crown Court and sentenced to life in prison in 2002, with a minimum term of 12 years. He was released on life licence last year.

Mr Dale, who had never been in trouble with the police, was shot as he chatted to friends in the street in 2001 and was found collapsed in an alleyway. Darren Thomas was also wounded in the hand by shots fired from the same gun.

Two days later the teenager had been due to give evidence at a trial of the killing of his friend Paul Ward, 16, who was stabbed to death in Cheetham Hill in January 2001.

Mr George, formerly of New Moston, was a member of the Cheetham Hill gang and was found guilty of Mr Dale's murder and charges of attempted murder and possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life.

He was convicted on the basis of gunshot residue which was found but has always maintained his innocence. In 2004 he submitted an appeal in 2004 which failed.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred the murder conviction to the Court of Appeal for a second time earlier this year, based on new scientific evidence and an analysis of the case by students at Cardiff University. They were working on the Innocence Project, which aims to help people who they believe have been wrongly convicted.

After his conviction was quashed Lynn Hayes, 51, insisted Mr George knew the identity of her son's killer and should name the culprit. She said: It has left me feeling sick. George has now claimed to be a reformed man. If that is true he should tell the police who did this.

'He has said that he is a mature adult. If that's true he should give the names of those responsible to the police. It's his so-called friends that should have saved him, not the appeal court. 'He should tell the police who pulled the trigger.'

Ms Hayes said Mr George had previously said a group of his friends had been involved. She added: 'There is no appeal available for my son's life. No amount of time will ever fix the heartbreak that my family continue to suffer each and everyday.'

Mrs Hayes said she didn't even know that the appeal court hearing was due to be heard today. She said Greater Manchester Police and the CPS didn't let her know and added: 'I heard about it from a friend who sent me a text after seeing it on the news.

'George said at the time that there was a code - that you didn't grass on your friends. But he has now said that he is a grown-up. Well if he is a grown-up he should tell what he knows.

'Daniel was an innocent 18-year-old boy that never had any dealings with gangsters, gangs, drugs or territory wars.'

Sir Brian Leveson, sitting with Mr Justice Green and Mr Justice Goss, expressed the court's 'gratitude' to the CCRC for the part it had played in the appeal.

He also paid tribute 'to the work of the Innocence Project and Pro Bono Unit at Cardiff Law School, which took up the appellant's case and pursued it so diligently'.

The judge described how the CCRC obtained its own scientific evidence and referred George's case to the appeal court on the grounds that there was 'a real possibility' that the evidence of gunshot residue 'does not now attract the value attributed to it at trial, and therefore does not support the identification evidence'. The CCRC also questioned the admissibility of voice identification evidence.

Mr George originally stood trial accused with three others - Ryan Brown, his brother Nathan Loftus, and Arron Cunningham.

Before the trial, Cunningham pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life, possessing ammunition without a certificate, and assisting offenders. He went on to give evidence for the prosecution.

Loftus changed his plea of not guilty to guilty of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life. He was sentenced to five years in a young offenders' institution.

Brown, who relied on an alibi for his defence, was acquitted of murder and attempted murder but convicted of wounding with intent. That conviction was later quashed for being 'inconsistent' with the acquittals, but he was sentenced to eight years' detention - reduced to seven years on appeal - for possession of a firearm with intent.

Sir Brian said the prosecution case was that George and Brown were responsible for the shooting, using a Walther PPK self-loading pistol which was recovered from Cunningham's house.

The judge said the background to the shooting was witness evidence all leading to the inference that it was the outcome of gang rivalry. The evidence against George was that gunshot residue had been found on a black Henri Lloyd hooded jacket found under the stairs at his home.

Subsequent analysis found that it bore four particles of gunshot residue, and the prosecution said this was evidence supporting the assertion that George was the gunman. The current appeal was primarily based on a scientific re-evaluation of the significance of gunshot residue generally.

Mr George's defence argued that the particles could have come from sources other than the shooting. Years after his conviction, the Forensic Science Service (FSS) had issued new guidelines in July 2006 on 'the assessment, interpretation and reporting of firearms chemistry cases', said the judge.

This document dealt with the prevalence of small numbers of particles of gunshot residue 'with the result, so it is argued, that the number and type of particles of residue found on the coat were so small so as to be at or near the level at which they could not be considered to have evidential value.'

Sir Brian said that, had the present scientific concerns raised in the appeal court been available to the trial judge, his directions to the jury 'would have been couched in terms of much greater circumspection and caution'.

He said: 'The particles of gunshot residue may well be consistent with the appellant's participation in the murder but, at the very least, the extent (if it got that far) to which they could provide positive corroboration would now have required much more detailed analysis of the science and the evidence.'

He said the conviction was no longer safe because the new evidence might reasonably have affected the trial jury's decision.

Original report here

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