James Alexander Culpin MacKeith

James Alexander Culpin MacKeith (“Jim”) was one of the most courageous forensic psychiatrists of his generation. Over three decades he showed, in the face of some resistance from the legal and psychiatric establishment, how vulnerable individuals could under pressure in police interviews make false confessions. His work with the psychologist Professor Gisli Gudjonsson helped to secure the release of the Guildford Four in 1989, the Birmingham Six in 1991, and Judith Ward in 1992, among others, and led to a full scale review of the criminal justice trial process by the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice (the Runciman commission). …