Verdicts a blow to police

The failure to convict anyone for Damilola Taylor's murder is a devastating blow to the reputations of both Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The prosecution case suffered heavy damage as key sections of evidence were ruled inadmissible, the star witness was discredited and the number of youths standing in the dock steadily diminished.

In the end, the evidence before them was so thin that the jury had little choice but to return not guilty verdicts.

After the verdicts were delivered, Detective Chief Inspector Trevor Shepherd, who headed the murder investigation, approached Damilola's parents in court and, clearly moved, said: "So sorry."

No one can doubt his commitment, or the acute disappointment for everyone connected to the murder team. But serious questions must now be asked about the way the investigation was handled.

Sixteen months ago a fatally wounded Damilola had staggered 30 yards along Blakes Road in Peckham and up three flights of stairs in a block of flats, desperately trying to reach his home.

He was found by workman Bill Callas who broke down in tears in court as he described the boy's last words: "I'm okay, I'm okay."

Despite the efforts of police and paramedics, Damilola bled to death. Doctors found a marble in his mouth, allegedly placed there by the gang to stop him screaming.

From the start, Scotland Yard was determined that the Damilola investigation would not be like the Stephen Lawrence case which had haunted them since 1993. The longterm damage caused by the Lawrence case came from the "institutional racism" label which damned the Met.

But the sheer incompetence of the detective work in the early days of the hunt for Stephen's killers exposed a fault line in Scotland Yard which remains today.

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary discovered that senior detectives were routinely juggling up to 14 serious cases at a time and there was a constant risk of errors creeping into cases.

All the best practices recommended in the Macpherson report into the Lawrence murder inquiry were implemented. There were reviews of the inquiry by new teams of detectives, an ethics committee to review the evidence-gatheringand outside black advisers to guide police on how to liaise with the local community.

But they could not stop the Damilola murder investigation turning into another disaster - not because police did not care about solving the murder, but because they tried too hard.

Of course, the police cannot choose their witnesses nor can they do much about the absence of forensic evidence.

But there are grave concerns about the handling of the 14-year-old girl, who was codenamed Bromley, who had claimed to be the only witness to the murder.

Her entire evidence was dismissed by the judge amid a scathing attack on police procedures. She lied and lied, but the most disturbing revelation centred on a police interview in which she was offered inducements to say she was at the scene.

The jury heard that while under police protection, Bromley was allowed to run up a £4,000 hotel bill in a week, was taken on trips to the seaside and given presents by officers.

Crucially, the girl was told by police that a £50,000 reward would be "more guaranteed" if she had been at the scene of the murder. The girl then agreed she had been there, singing: "I'm in the money."

Detectives in charge said they knew Bromley was a difficult witness, but they had few choices but to use her.

Their boss, Mr Shepherd, said: "This was a forbidding estate in south London and we did not get to choose our witnesses."

But in court, as the case unravelled, it seemed apparent that police were so convinced that the girl, who was 12 at the time of the killing, held the key to the case that they blinded themselves to the possibility that she would make a hopeless witness on the stand. In desperation they tried to find the evidence to fit what she said she saw in Blakes Road instead of keeping an open mind.

As a result, the trial turned into what defence counsel Baroness Mallalieu, QC, described as "little short of a fiasco" in which detectives and Crown lawyers ended up "scraping the bottom of the evidential barrel".

The pressure to get a result was overwhelming. In court, Mr Shepherd admitted writing a memo to the Crown Prosecution Service saying dropping murder charges against four teenagers would "severely damage the reputation of the Met".

But such admissions left the police open to criticism from defence lawyer Courtenay Griffiths, QC, that the trial was all about the "politics of race" and not the evidence.

Mr Griffiths told Mr Shepherd: "To put it bluntly, politics played a major part in this case - the politics of race." The lawyer accused The Met of being desperate to solve the investigation because they could not afford "another Stephen Lawrence". Pc Carolyn Crooks, the police minder of Bromley, was accused of "cynically taking advantage" of her to "manufacture an eyewitness".

When detectives first considered interviewing the girl, Mr Shepherd ordered that she should be " memorandum interviewed," the term given to questioning carried out by trained officers and intended to avoid intimidating, threatening or putting pressure on children.

But when the first memo interview failed to elicit enough information, he decided to abandon the approved procedure, instead allowing her to be questioned by Miss Crooks and another officer in the presence of an adult guardian.

Miss Crooks, who has since been promoted to sergeant, had not been trained in questioning children. She admitted that she had not read Home Office guidelines for officers advising that interviews should be no longer than one hour, and that children should not be prompted or pressured.

In a further blow, the jury was not allowed to hear a tearful " confession" by one of the brothers to social worker Anne McMorris, who worked at Feltham Young Offender Institution.

She was called to see the teenager after fears that he would try to kill himself. She told the judge in the absence of the jury that Boy A told her: "We stabbed him. We didn't mean to kill him."

But describing his extreme distress, she said: "I think it would be right to say that you could not rely on anything he said" Mr Justice Hooper ruled that the boy's words did not amount to a confession.

The evidence the police came to rely on from Feltham was also discredited as it emerged that a questionnaire had been sent to 150 inmates asking if they had heard either brother mention Damilola.

One witness was revealed to be serving a long sentence for serious sexual offences and had written to police demanding a deal, including parole, if he gave evidence.