The weekend marked the 20th anniversary of the start of a grieving North-East mother’s campaign to change an archaic law. Peter Barron reflects on “Justice For Michael”

MICHAEL Gibson just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In April 1992, he and his younger brother, David, were walking along High Row, in Darlington town centre, when they were approached by three youths.

Michael, quiet and shy, was a month away from his 21st birthday and had plans to get engaged to his girlfriend. One of the youths, later identified as David Clark, attacked him.

He hit the ground and was saved from choking on his tongue by his brother before being taken by ambulance to Darlington Memorial Hospital and then transferred to Middlesbrough General.

So began a tragedy which was destined to not only end an innocent young man’s life and devastate a loving family, but to change the law.

At the time, the “year and a day rule”

existed in Britain. It was a law which had been enshrined centuries earlier before life support systems could even be imagined. But the rule enabled killers to literally get away with murder. If victims of an assault lived for 366 days or more, their attackers could not stand trial for manslaughter or murder.

Michael lay in a coma for 16 months before his death at the age of 22. David Clark could only be charged with grievous bodily harm and was jailed for two years. He was free before Michael’s life support system was shut down.

How could that be right? How could a nonsense of a law from the dark ages deprive a family of justice? Surely, it had to be changed.

Michael’s mother Pat – one of the bravest and most inspirational people I’ve met – set about fighting for justice for her son. She bumped into Darlington MP Alan Milburn in the hospital car park and opened her heart.

The Northern Echo launched the “Justice For Michael” campaign, urging its readers to sign a petition, demanding that the wretched year and a day law be scrapped.

The mother, the local MP and the local paper worked together and readers responded in their thousands. It was one of the most important campaigns in The Northern Echo’s distinguished history.

On April 12, 1994 – 20 years ago at the weekend – Mr Milburn was granted his first reading in the House of Commons of a Bill calling for a new clause (clause 15) to be added to murder legislation, scrapping the year and a day rule. The Tories argued that the Law Commission should be given time to consider the ramifications and the second reading failed by 277 votes to 260. Nevertheless, it marked the beginning of the legal process which was to consign the rule to history.

Shortly afterwards, Michael’s mum wrote an open letter in The Northern Echo. It began: “When I put the phone down after the call from Alan Milburn, telling me that his move to abolish the year and a day rule had been defeated, I felt weary and saddened. I thought the fight for justice was getting too much for me. Then, once again, I saw in my mind the face of my dying son: thin, gaunt, a terrible bluey-grey tinge, hardly recognisable as that of our muchloved Michael. He’d lost everything. He’d even lost his voice – but I hadn’t lost mine...”

The campaign went on. I was news editor at the time and I, along with chief reporter Nigel Burton, who had done so much brilliant work on the campaign, travelled to London with Pat to deliver the petition and campaign dossier to the Law Commission.

The cogs of the legislative process turned slowly but surely and in 1996 the Law Reform (Year and a Day Rule) Act was established.

There are no exact figures for how many manslaughter and murder convictions have been achieved as a result of that law change, but the year and a day rule amendment has been cited in several high profile cases.

Pat Gibson is 71 now. After retiring in 2002, she and her husband, Ian, emigrated to Spain for nearly ten years but have recently returned to England and they live in West Cornforth.

Their son David now lives in Chicago.

Pat told me: “I don’t think I realised at the time quite how momentous it all was. I remember someone from the Crown Prosecution Service telling me that there was nothing I could do. It just made me more angry.

“The support was amazing – from Alan Milburn and the Echo. It was vital because it gave us a voice. When I’ve seen cases since then, and know that justice can now be done, it gives me gratification to this day. It couldn’t help Michael – but it helped others.”

MR MILBURN said: “Pat’s an amazing woman and she led the campaign. It is very rare for someone to lose a loved one in such circumstances and to decide to put right for others what wasn’t right for Michael.

“Pat, myself, the Echo and the people of Darlington all came together to change a fundamental aspect of the British legal system.”

In 1992, to ensure the campaign had as high a profile as possible, Pat took the agonising decision to allow a Northern Echo photographer into the hospital room to take a picture of Michael in a coma. The picture was published on the front page but, at the family’s request, it is not reproduced on this page today.

“Allowing that picture to be taken was hard,” Pat recalled. “I talked about it with Ian and David and we went ahead because we asked ourselves what Michael would have wanted. He couldn’t speak up, so we had to speak up for him. We had to make people sit up and take notice – and they did.”

Pat thinks about Michael every day. “Sometimes, I bump into his friends. They’re in their forties and it makes me wonder what Michael would look like now,” she said.

“You never get over the loss of a child but you learn to work round it and live with it. I can’t forget and I can’t forgive either – I’m not that great a person.

“I just know that what we did all those years ago was right.”