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| Mahmood Hussein Mattan |
Mahmood Hussein Mattan (1923–3 September 1952) was a Somali former merchant
seaman who was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Lily Volpert on 6 March
1952. The murder took place in the Docklands area of Cardiff, Wales, and Mattan
was mainly convicted on the evidence of a single prosecution witness. Mattan
was executed in 1952 and his conviction was quashed 45 years later on 24
February 1998, his case being the first to be referred to the Court of Appeal
by the newly formed Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Early
history
Mahmood
Hussein Mattan was born in British Somaliland in 1923 and his job as a merchant
seaman took him to Wales where he found work at a foundry in Tiger Bay. In
Cardiff he met Laura Williams, a worker at a paper factory. The couple married
just three months after meeting, but as a multiracial couple they suffered
racist abuse from the community. The couple had three children, but in 1950
they separated and afterwards lived in separate houses in the same street. In
1952 Mattan resigned his job at the steelworks.
Conviction
for murder
On
6 March 1952, Lily Volpert, a 42-year-old, was found murdered in her
outfitter's shop in the Cardiff Docklands area. Her throat had been cut with a razor,
and about hundred pounds sterling had been stolen. Within a few hours Mattan
was questioned by the Cardiff City Police and ten days later he was charged
with Volpert's murder. When the police raided Mattan's home they discovered a
broken shaving razor and a pair of shoes with blood specks on them. There was
no evidence of any blood-stained clothing or the missing money.
The
trial took place at the Glamorgan Assizes in Swansea in July 1952. The main
witness for the prosecution was Harold Cover, a Jamaican with a history of
violence, who later received a share of a reward of £200 offered by the Volpert
family. Cover claimed to have seen Mattan leaving Volpert's shop, though it
later emerged that he had previously identified another Somali living in the
area at the time, Taher Gass, as the man he had seen. The jury was not told of
this, or of Cover's background during the trial. Neither was the jury informed
that four witnesses had failed to select Mattan from an identification parade.
One 12-year-old girl, who saw a black man near the shop at the time of the
murder, and was confronted with Mattan, stated that he was not the person she
witnessed, but the police ignored her statement and did not take the evidence
to court. Furthermore the shoes belonging to Mattan with specks of blood were
second-hand, and no forensic information was brought forward linking the
samples.
Mattan
was described as having a limited understanding of English, and refused the
services of an interpreter. In a trial slanted with racial overtones, Mattan's
barrister described his client as "Half-child of nature; half,
semi-civilised savage". On 24 July 1952, Mattan was convicted of the
murder of Lily Volpert and the judge passed the mandatory sentence of death.
Execution
Mattan
was refused leave to appeal and to call further evidence in August 1952, and on
3 September 1952, six months after the murder of Volpert, he was executed by
hanging at Cardiff Prison. He was the last person to be hanged at the prison.
Subsequent
events
In
1954 Taher Gass was convicted of murdering wages clerk Granville Jenkins. Gass
was found insane and sent to Broadmoor; after his release he was deported to
Somalia. In 1969 Harold Cover was convicted for the attempted murder of his
daughter, using a razor. Mattan's middle son, Omar was found dead on a Scottish
beach in 2003, and an open verdict was returned.
Posthumous
appeal
he
Mattan family's first attempt to overturn the conviction was denied in 1969 by
then Home Secretary James Callaghan - by this stage, three years had passed
since the death penalty's abolition.
In
1996 the family was given permission to have Mattan's body exhumed and moved
from a felon's grave at the prison to be buried in consecrated ground in a
Cardiff cemetery.
When
the Criminal Cases Review Commission was set up in the mid 1990s, Mattan's case
was the first to be referred by it. On 24 February 1998 the Court of Appeal
came to the judgement that the original case was, in the words of Lord Justice
Rose, "demonstrably flawed". The family were awarded £725,000
compensation, to be shared equally among Mattan's wife and three children. The
compensation was the first award to a family for a person wrongfully hanged.
Lesson Learn:
As
usual, an abolitionist can use Mattan’s case as an example to abolish the death
penalty. They can accuse a Retentionist (I was a former an opponent of the
death penalty) like me of murder, but I always say, “I am strongly against
executing the innocent but I am still in favour of executing the guilty.”
At
least, a retentionist like me is able to be honest and admit that many years
ago there were a small number of innocent people being executed. An
abolitionist will consistently keep quiet about recidivist murderers who kill
again and again. A retentionist must
condemn the execution of an innocent person, but support executing the guilty.
Retentionist must find out what went wrong with the trial and investigation and
prepare for future safeguards the next time.
These
two posts on two overturned sentences in the United Arab Emirates can be used
to learn to prevent a wrongful conviction in a capital case:
1. PROTECTING
DEFENDANT, A.A IN DUBAI: LESSONS TO BE LEARN.
2. SAFEGUARDS
IN THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES COURTS
http://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/safeguards-in-united-arab-emirates.html
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