May 5, 2004: No fresh charges over racist murder

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have announced there is insufficient evidence to bring fresh charges over the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. This follows a 5 year long reinvestigation by the Metropolitan police. Three white men - Neil Acourt, Luke Knight and Gary Dobson - were acquitted of Mr Lawrence’s murder in 1996. Though a 1997 inquest concluded that he was "unlawfully killed in a completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths", no one has been convicted of the murder (though Met Police commissioner Sir John Stevens once went on record stating that he knew the killers’ identities).

In its advice to the police the CPS stated that while the reinvestigation produced an eye witness who had not previously come forward, their evidence did not provide reliable identification. There was no credible forensic evidence placing specific individuals at the murder scene. A number of accounts of alleged confessions were also investigated but almost all proved to be second hand hearsay and unverifiable and therefore not admissible. None were sufficient to support a prosecution.

The Macpherson Report into Stephen Lawrence’s murder explicitly stated that the Metropolitan Police were "institutionally racist" and that this was reflected in their investigation. The Report  illuminates the dynamics of race within the criminal justice system and arguably represented a key point in the development of UK criminal justice.

According to Macpherson, institutional racism pertains where there has been a "collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.