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| Lindsay Sandiford |
A grandmother from Redcar on death row in Indonesia has lost an appeal at the UK’s highest court over the lawfulness of a Government policy not to provide funding for legal representation to Britons facing capital charges abroad.
Five Supreme Court justices in London have today unanimously dismissed a challenge by Lindsay Sandiford, who was convicted last year of trafficking drugs into the resort island of Bali and sentenced to death by firing squad.
But the court pointed out that the 57-year-old remains in “jeopardy” and the evidence now called for a further urgent review of the policy in her case.
The judges were told at a hearing last month that she is effectively without legal representation in Indonesia to allow her to pursue a further hearing of her case and has “no access to any further private funding”.
Her QC Aidan O’Neill said that previously Sandiford, now of Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, had been able to fund her legal fight against the death sentence in the Indonesian courts through the “kindness of strangers”.
The ruling by Lords Mance, Clarke, Sumption, Carnwath and Toulson follows a Court of Appeal defeat for Sandiford in April last year when three leading judges ruled that the UK Government’s policy of not providing funding for legal representation to any British national who faced criminal proceedings abroad - even in death penalty cases - was not unlawful.
