the police had "compromised the whole trial process" and "made a mockery of the police caution. They undermined and infringed the statutory right of a defendant to confer with a solicitor in private."

Mr Justice Newman

Don't be mislead by paragrah 3 that the officers concerned will face both criminal and internal police investigations.

MOJUK would like to reassure y'all, that if it does happen, (1) they will be found innocent, or (2) in the unlikelyhood that they may be found guilty, they will all take early retirement on grounds of 'ill helath".

    Five men accused of a gangland murder plot walked free yesterday because police illegally taped them talking to their lawyers.

    The judge threw out the �3 million trial after ruling that Lincolnshire police had flagrantly broken the law. "Justice has been affronted in a grave way," Mr Justice Newman said. He also criticised prosecutors who tried to supress the tapes with a public interest defence.

    The three officers who allowed the bugging to take place are now likely to face both criminal and internal police investigations. Solicitors for Robert Sutherland, who was accused of carrying out the murder, also threatened to take civil action against the police, and legal figures said that the case highlighted what they believed to be widespread illegal police bugging.

    All five men had all been accused of conspiring to kill Mark Corley, a convicted robber who was shot in the head and dumped on remote farmland near Darlington 18 months ago.

    But while they were under arrest, Detective Chief Inspector Tony White, Detective Inspector Roger Bannister and Detective Sergeant Steve Thom organised covert surveillance to record their confidential conversations with their solicitors. The bugs were placed in their cells and in the exercise yard at police stations in Sleaford and Grantham.

    Yesterday, after ten days of legal argument at Nottingham Crown Court, the judge said that despite the grave and horrific circumstances of the case, he had no choice but to abandon the trial because the five could not be guaranteed a fair hearing.

    He said that if the police intention was to gather information from the suspects talking to each other, as they claimed, bugging the exercise yard would have been pointless since no two suspects were allowed out in the area at once.

    Even when other detectives knew what they were listening to they made no attempt to stop the recordings "I found their evidence to this court incredible," the judge said. "Having carefully considered it, I am satisfied that it is more likely than not that these officers planted bugging devices to deliberately capture any conversation between these men and their solicitors. I believe a flagrant breach of the law has occurred."

    Having deliberately obtained confidential information, the detectives compromised the whole trial, the judge said. "They have made a mockery of the police caution. They undermined and infringed the statutory right of a defendant to confer with a solicitor in private. His right is meaningless if the officers wait for him to go out with his solicitor so they can go out and listen to what he declined to mention."

    The court also heard that when the trial was about to begin prosecutors tried to suppress evidence of the bugging with Public Interest Immunity Certificates - which are designed to protect sensitive information and sources. Tape recordings of the men's conversations had been logged as evidence but defence solicitors were never told about them.

    It was only after the prosecution made an unsuccessful request for the evidence to be withheld that the contents of the tapes became known. "In my judgement there was a very very serious delay in the progress in which disclosure was made," the judge said. "The fact that privileged conversations were listed as evidence called for disclosure and the prosecution's application for non-disclosure was misconceived.

    The five accused men - Mr Sutherland, 35, John Smith, 26, Gary Self, 36, Danny Gray, 21, and John Toseland, 58 - were all charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Mr Sutherland was also accused of murder. All left court without comment, as did the three police officers - although Lincolnshire Police said that they would study the judge's criticisms.

    Chris Milligan, one the solicitors who was bugged, said: "This was a gross intrusion into confidentiality. It means that in future I will be extremely wary of giving frank advise to my clients in police stations which is unacceptable."

by Oliver Wright, The Times

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    Lincolnshire police officers believed that they could bug solicitors because the defence would never find out.

    Under the Investigative Powers Act 2000 police may bug their own cells and even prisons if they believe that they might glean information of relevance to a case.

    Any application has to be authorised by a superintendent. The guidelines state that conversations between lawyer and client cannot be taped.

    But in the Corley case officers disregarded this and bugged an area of two police stations known to be used by lawyers to talk privately to clients. The scandal might never have come to light had it not been for the diligence of Mr Justice Newman.

    It is normal for police using these powers to apply before a trial for a public interest immunity certificate from the trial judge. If granted, this means that the prosecution does not have to disclose to the defence any evidence related to what it has done as long as it is not to be called in direct evidence.

    The purpose of such certificates is to ensure that criminals are not aware of the methods that police use in gathering evidence.

vBut in this case, having seen the way in which officers had abused the system from log books that made it clear that confidential conversations had been recorded, Mr Justice Newman denied the prosecution the certificate and ordered all the documents be disclosed to the defence.

    When the defence saw them they were scandalised. The very fact that the bugging had occurred was enough to prejudice the entire trial. The ramifications of the Corley case are likely to be felt much further afield than just Lincolnshire.

by Oliver Wright, The Times