by Harriet Wistrich, Director of Centre for Women’s Justice
Help us to help other women appeal convictions arising from violence, abuse, exploitation and coercive control to which they have been subjected.
Bad Justice
Fri Martin’s ‘story’ was last week featured on the BBC Three documentary entitled ‘Bad Love: Why did Fri kill Kyle?”. The documentary interviewed friends and family of both Fri and Kyle to show, I suppose, the tragedy for all involved where someone dies in a domestic homicide. If the film had instead been entitled, “Bad Justice: Why was Fri convicted of murder?”, it could have shown how the criminal justice system is heavily stacked against women, and particularly black working class women, as defendants and how hard it is to get a fair hearing where an offence had occurred in the context of a history of coercive control and sexual violence.
Fri Martin, a young black women from Toxteth in Liverpool, stabbed her boyfriend, Kyle Farrell, in November 2014, following a violent confrontation during which he had tried to strangle her. Fri and Kyle had met at school and started dating from the age of 15. The relationship, whilst good at the beginning, became soured by Kyle’s violence and coercive and controlling behaviour which saw Fri change from a bubbly teenager to a depressed mother of two small children.
Fri was charged with murder and tried at Liverpool Crown Court the following summer. She pleaded not guilty, arguing that she had been acting in self defence, but the jury convicted her of murder. Her legal team badly failed her; they failed to build up a relationship of trust that might have enabled her to disclose the full extent of the violence and abuse she was subjected to. They failed to obtain psychiatric evidence which would have shown that as a consequence of the violence she was subjected to she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which was likely to have made her hyper-vigilante and influenced her response to the violence she faced on the day of the offence. Her lawyers also failed to obtain evidence, captured by the police when Fri was photographed in custody, which showed bruise marks supporting her account that she had been strangled. Instead, her barristers signed an ‘agreed facts’ document which formed part of the jury bundle, accepting there were no ‘visible injuries’ supporting her account that she was strangled.
Shortly after her conviction which resulted in the mandatory life sentence, I was approached by Fri’s family to see if I could help find grounds of appeal. It took me and my counsel several years to explore potential grounds of appeal and obtain evidence that would eventually pass the extremely high threshold required to appeal a conviction. Initially, a Judge at the Court of Appeal read our submissions and rejected our ground. So, we applied to renew the application for permission to appeal at a hearing before a full court in December 2019. Permission was granted and Fri had to wait another year until December 2020 for the full hearing.
The appeal relied on psychiatric and psychological reports which diagnosed Fri retrospectively with PTSD arising from the violence she had experienced which could have assisted with a partial defence of manslaughter. The Crown Prosecution Service obtained their own reports which very largely agreed with ours. In December 2020, the Court of Appeal quashed Fri’s murder conviction. At this stage the CPS were invited to accept a plea from Fri of guilty to manslaughter, but they refused and a re-trial for murder was ordered. In May 2021, on the eve of the retrial, following the dramatic emergence of photographic evidence revealing strangle marks which had not been disclosed by the police, the Crown offered to accept a plea to manslaughter and Fri jumped at the chance rather than risk another unpredictable jury verdict. The judge sentenced her to a very harsh ten years imprisonment and she had to return to prison until eventually she was eligible for release in December 2021. By this time she had been separated from her two children for seven years.
Fri speaks out
Fri will be joining myself, David Challen and Louise Bullivant at a fundraising event on March 14th (event registration). As many will recall, David campaigned courageously to help raise awareness of coercive control in support of the appeal by his mother, Sally. Louise is the solicitor for Emma-Jayne Magson, convicted of the murder of her violent partner. Emma Jayne Magson successfully appealed her murder conviction but like Fri her case was sent to a retrial where, horrifically, she was reconvicted following a brutal prosecution of her. For more information on Emma’s case, see my previous blog piece - The Emma-Jayne Magson Case: Misogyny Is Alive And Well In The Criminal Justice System
The many other women
Interviewee number 17, Women Who Kill research report
In February 2021 we launched our report, ‘Women who Kill: How the state criminalises women we might otherwise be burying’. As the title suggests, many of the women who end up killing their partners are victims of male violence who could easily have been the one who ended up dead. As Fri’s brother, Ishmail, said in the documentary, “When I received news that police and ambulance were attending Fri’s home after a fatal incident, my first thought was that it was Fri who was dead”.
We have also been working on a project looking at the wider issue of the unjust criminalisation of victims of abuse. We know that the vast majority of women in prison are themselves victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse and exploitation, many there as a direct result of that abuse. We have developed a series of recommendations for change across the criminal justice system to tackle the criminalisation of women who should have been protected. Whether they have retaliated to violence inflicted on them, or been coerced into offending because of an abusive partner, it is a shameful indictment of a failing criminal justice system that resources are put into their prosecution rather than improving systems to prevent violence and abuse in the first place.
As a result of the work we do, many women have approached us (and our sister campaigning group, Justice for Women) seeking assistance to appeal convictions arising in circumstances where they were victims. It is very hard to find solicitors to help take forward these cases and part of the reason is the decimation of criminal legal aid which makes it hard for cash strapped firms to invest in the work required to help build up grounds of appeal.
Interviewee number 9, Women Who Kill research report
Help us
We have therefore launched an appeal for funding to help us support lawyers exploring appeals against conviction. The funding appeal runs from International Women’s Day and, during one week only until 15 March, any money donated will be doubled by the Big Give fund.
The funds we raise will go towards paying towards lawyers costs where legal aid is unavailable or so limited as to make work on these cases impossible. It will also fund the obtaining of evidence and court transcripts where legal aid cannot cover these costs. And, it will pay for expert input to assist legal teams taking forward any such cases.
Please donate if you are able and share with others.