Winston Trew spent nearly 50 years fighting to clear his name – you can read his story, co-authored book with Graham Satchwell, Rot at the Core published by The History Press, 2021 [Jess Hurd]

WHEN a police officer is convicted of a serious crime and sentenced to prison, be it for corruption, physical violence or sexual abuse, many may reasonably assume the justice system would automatically scrutinise their casework.

If an officer’s integrity is fundamentally compromised, cases they touched should immediately be called into question.

Yet, there is currently no legal duty to examine that officer’s casework for potential miscarriages of justice.

This creates a profound institutional blind spot. The burden of uncovering and overturning wrongful convictions falls largely on those affected.

Relying on their own determination and resources, victims of corrupt policing endure years battling through a complex legal process to have their cases reviewed and reconsidered.

This systemic gap is exactly why I am supporting the campaign and petition for Trew’s Law.

The campaign is rooted in landmark research by APPEAL and the University of York, which revealed the scale of this accountability gap. Researchers identified at least 64 serving or former police officers who received immediate custodial sentences between 2023 and 2026 for offences including corruption, dishonesty, violence and sexual abuse.

Yet, despite the seriousness of those convictions, there is no central mechanism for tracking whether their past cases have been reviewed.

Trew’s Law proposes the automatic, independent triage and review of all closed cases linked to an imprisoned officer.

Rather than leaving those affected to uncover an officer’s wrongdoing and its impact on their own case, it would require the state to identify potentially compromised cases, notify those affected, and disclose the information they need to challenge unsafe convictions.

Named after Winston Trew, one of the “Oval Four”, the campaign stands as a powerful testament both to the lasting harm caused by police corruption and to the resilience required to challenge it.

Gunnjeet Gill

In 1972 Winston was wrongfully convicted on the basis of fabricated evidence produced by corrupt British Transport Police officer Derek Ridgewell, whose misconduct disproportionately targeted young black men.

Although Ridgewell was eventually imprisoned for his own criminal offences, there was no review of the cases he handled.

As a result, unsafe convictions remained hidden for decades.

Winston spent nearly 50 years researching, campaigning and fighting to clear his name before his conviction was finally quashed in 2019.

And his ordeal was not an isolated incident.

In the absence of an automatic review process, other victims of police corruption have uncovered the truth and evidence needed to prove their innocence through chance and extraordinary persistence, encouraged by Winston’s campaign.

Stephen Simmons searched Ridgewell’s name online and discovered that the officer central to his conviction had himself been imprisoned for a criminal offence, decades after his own conviction.

The quantifiable human cost is immense.

Since 2018 some 13 convictions linked to Ridgewell have been quashed. Together, those individuals spent a collective 623 years living under the shadow of wrongful convictions.

Many victims’ convictions were overturned posthumously.

Errol Campbell, whose conviction was finally overturned in 2025, died more than two decades before his name was cleared.

The Court of Appeal acknowledged the “awful consequences” of the decades-long delay, noting that Campbell had regarded himself, with justification, as a victim of racism.

With Trew’s Law, this justification can be brought much sooner.

Trew’s Law would ensure that the state right bent cops’ wrongs, as the campaign urges, and strengthen its commitment to accountability and justice.

Trew’s Law would ensure that past injustices are uncovered and future miscarriages of justice are prevented.

Sign the petition for Trew’s Law. Justice delayed should never again be justice denied at: https://appeal.org.uk/trews-law/

• Gunnjeet Gill is a legal intern with APPEAL, Centre for Criminal Appeals, and is currently pursuing an LLM in legal practice.