No charges over Tomlinson death
An officer seen pushing Ian Tomlinson to the ground prior to his death will not faces charges, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has said.
An officer seen pushing Ian Tomlinson to the ground prior to his death will not faces charges, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has said.
Video footage of the G20 protests identified a Metropolitan Police officer pushing Mr Tomlinson to the floor. The newspaper vendor died on April 1, 2009.
The announcement made last week states that conflicting evidence on the cause of Mr Tomlinsons death would mean it would not be possible to prove, without reasonable doubt, the cause of Mr Tomlinsons death.
Mr Tomlinsons body underwent three post-mortems, but no agreement has been reached on the conflicting conclusions. The first post-mortem examination by Dr Freddy Patel found he died of natural causes linked to coronary artery disease; the second pathologist, Dr Nat Carey, found he died of internal bleeding as a result of blunt force trauma, in combination with cirrhosis of the liver; the third examination agreed with the findings of the second test.
Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer said there was no prospect of a conviction of unlawful manslaughter while experts could not agree on the cause of death.
“After a thorough and careful review of the evidence, the CPS has decided that there is no realistic prospects of a conviction against the police officer in question for any offence arising from the matter investigated and that no charges should be brought against him.
“In the face of this fundamental disagreement between the experts about the cause of Mr Tomlinson`s death, the CPS embarked on a detailed and careful examination of all the medical evidence and held a series of meetings with experts in attempt to resolve, or at least narrow, the areas of disagreement.
Read more in the next issue of Police Professional, out July 29.