Danny Major's Case

Introduction by Danny

On the early hours of the 6th September 2003 I was on duty as a patrol constable in Leeds city centre when I was assaulted in the help desk area of Millgarth Police Station in Leeds by a Sean Rimmington. The assault resulted in me receiving a cut lip and some bruising and swelling which later required hospital treatment as I was sick a short time later. The assault by Rimmington was committed whilst he was being arrested by myself for being drunk & disorderly. He subsequently punched me twice in the face resulting in him also being arrested for actual bodily harm upon myself.

The matters that lead from this resulted in me being prosecuted for three separate assaults on Rimmington, being acquitted of one and being sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for the other two.

We are still in possession of extensive CCTV footage showing officers committing offences which have been white washed by professional standards.

BBC Radio Leeds

Danny speaking about his case on the 6am news show on 14th December hosted by Andrew Edwards and Georgey Spanswick:

At 6am:
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    Or download MP3 (5.5 MB)

At 7am:
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    Or download MP3 (8.2 MB)

21 Points about Danny's Case

1. A CPS lawyer lied and gave a false account of injuries suffered by complainant at Magistrate Court during pre trial issues when requesting the case be sent to Crown Court.

2. The CPS beefed up the severity of injuries to cover up fact they had neglected to deal with Danny's file within six month time limit. Had they not done this the matter would have been dismissed as out of time.

3. The CPS charged Danny with an offence for which he had not been interviewed about and this gave a false interpretation of any replies he made during interview.

4. West Yorkshire Police Professional Standards attempted to hide previous and outstanding discipline matters of main witness. These were issues of honesty and integrity and when it was discovered the Judge stopped the first trial and replaced it with an abuse of process hearing.

5. This main witness a police officer has indecently assaulted a female colleague at work and despite her complaint dealt with it at such a low level they did not have to disclose it to the court. He received a verbal warning in an informal meeting with his supervisor despite initially denying the matter until faced with cctv footage of the incident.

6. The complainant in the case assaulted Danny during his arrest, this was witnessed by another police officer. This mans file was lost / misplaced by police / cps, and ran out of time for a prosecution, which resulted in him having no convictions when produced at Court as a witness against Danny.

7. The Officer in the case did not recover cctv footage which would have shown Danny was telling the truth about one allegation in the van dock. The Officer stated there was no footage but it was revealed in court that there should have been. This failure denied Danny evidence to prove main witness was lying.

8. The Officer in the case did not recover data from computers concerning cell buzzer activations which could have proved the prosecution account was false. When after two trials the Officer went to get the data its seems the system suffered a 'catastrophic failure' a month before our attempt to obtain it as a result all data was lost.

9. The Officer in the case did not ask forensic expert to study blood splatter patterns in the cell, this was because the prosecution account was that the complainant was never stood up or walking around the cell and may have suffered a fall which caused the injury.

10. The Officer in the case did not have blood around the cell intercom tested to prove who's it was, as above this would have proved there account to be wrong if there was evidence the complainant had been stood up on his feet.

11. The Officer in the case never followed up an allegation made by the complainant which was he had been left in the cell but some time later two officers came in and assaulted him when he asked for a drink of water.

12. Six police officers where fighting with the complainant when he was arrested, only one had his uniform seized for examination. the fact is there may have been blood on those officers uniforms but this did not fit the prosecution version so it was ignored.

13. There was a blood stain identified on a wall at the place of the complainants arrest but as it was the prosecution account that the complainant did not bleed until he was placed in the cell this did not agree with their version and if it had been tested it would have undermined their case.

14. The Officer in the case admits visiting the complainant at hospital and also admits giving details of the incident doing all this in direct contravention of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984.

15. The Officer in the case admitted in the witness box further breaches of the above act by visiting the complainant at home whilst he was still a suspect awaiting a decision from CPS for the assault on Danny. We now know this to be a lie as this Officer closed the complainants Custody record a month after the incident. This Officer knew he was not breaching P.A.C.E. act of 1984 on these home visits as the complainant was no longer a suspect and his custody record had been finalised.He could not let the court know that however as he had made the story up that CPS had lost the file, when in reality there was no original file sent to CPS. Being blamed for breaching PACE covered up a far more serious offence.

16. The Officer in the case edited available cctv footage in such a way as to misrepresent the true facts of the events.

17. A further thirteen hours of cctv footage was accidentally discovered halfway through the third trial, this was not disclosed by the police and not recorded on any unused material schedule.This footage showed the Crowns case to be a complete lie and misrepresentation of the facts, and also that the main prosecution witnesses all lied about thier movements and actions.

18. Police misrepresented evidence with regard to forensic tests. They did this by giving the forensic expert very little detail of the allegation, when this expert was given the full facts of the evidence of the prosecution witness, she stated that it could not have happened like the prosecution witness had stated.

19. We have possession of cctv footage that shows a female detention officer who is on camera for over one and a half to two hours without visiting any prisoners. She then tells a male colleague she has done some visits in this time period and gets him to fill in custody recorde on her behalf.

20. This same female is also on cctv making further false entries on custody record belonging to the complainant in this matter. These entries are dictated by a Sergeant who was not present for the passage she is writing, and also she times the entries to make it look as though it was done one hour before the actual entry. It was known to all involved that this record would be scrutinised by investigating officers and was illegally written up in an effort to decieve the investigating officers and consequentley pervert the course of justice.

21. We have cctv footage of the staged discovery of the injured complainant in which the witnesses can be seen hiding round corners and waiting for signals to begin their deception.

Danny has the support of YHAI and all his friends and family. He is currently taking his case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).