Overview

• A panel of three judges quashed Plummer’s 2023 conviction for the 1997 murder of Janice Cartwright-Gilbert near Wilden, Bedfordshire.
• The court determined that hearsay evidence from paid informant Christopher Dunne lacked corroborating detail and should have been excluded.
• Dunne’s claim of a cell confession emerged from his shared 1997 incarceration with Plummer but went untested after Dunne’s death in 1999.
• Following the judgment, the Crown Prosecution Service said it cannot seek another retrial because the remaining evidence falls short of a realistic prospect of conviction.
• The decision underscores heightened scrutiny of informant hearsay in serious cases and the Criminal Cases Review Commission’s role in correcting potential miscarriages of justice.