Published 24 July 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a987
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a987

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Southall’s secret case files show no reason to suspect miscarriages of justice

¹ BMJ

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A 17 month review of "secret" case files on children held by the paediatrician David Southall has found no evidence that any information was kept from the defence when prosecutions took place.

The Crown Prosecution Service’s review was set up in February 2007 by the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, after it emerged that Dr Southall kept 4344 "special" case files on children that were not stored on their hospital records.

The review team searched the files to try to find those in which he had appeared as a prosecution witness and ensure that any material that needed to be disclosed had been handed to defence lawyers. If not the case would be referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission for investigation as a possible miscarriage of justice.

But the review found "no grounds" to indicate that relevant material had not been passed on to defence teams, said the solicitor . . . [Full text of this article]

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