World: The Wrong Man

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His plea was as old as justice itself. You have the wrong man, argued Timothy Evans, who was charged with strangling his wife and infant daughter. The real killer, he swore, was the prosecution's chief witness, John Christie. Neither judge nor jury was impressed, and in 1950 Evans was hanged in a London prison.

Three years later came some startling new evidence: in the garden and wall of Christie's seedy London flat, police found the bodies of seven women. Among them was the corpse of Evans' wife. At his trial, Christie confessed to Mrs. Evans' murder.

For all that, an inquiry into Timothy Evans' conviction failed to clear him. But enough doubts remained for Britain's ban-the-noosers to seize on the Evans case as the prime example of the permanence of errors under capital punishment. Last year, when Parliament finally suspended the death penalty for a trial five-year period, Evans' death played a major role in the decision.

Last year a second inquiry into Evans' case was set up. This time the presiding justice ruled that "no jury could be satisfied of Evans' guilt beyond reasonable doubt." Last week, 16 years after his execution, Timothy Evans was granted a free pardon by Queen Elizabeth. Said Home Secretary Roy Jenkins to the House of Commons: "This case has no precedent and—I hope and believe—will have no successor." Responded one pleased M.P.: "British justice has shown itself big enough to admit that it can make a mistake."