Where the Postmasters meet the VAWG Cartel - Jane Metcalfe, Sonia Poulton and the case of Robin Garbutt

Last Friday, Jane Metcalfe guested on journalist Sonia Poulton’s Wake Up With Sonia online show (starts at 57.50 min). A friend of Robin’s ex-girlfriend, Jane has been campaigning for Robin since hearing about his claim of wrongful conviction of the murder of his wife Diana in 2010, and spoke at the Empowering The Innocent: "Women on False Allegations and Wrongful Convictions" conference at the University of Bristol in spring 2025.

There is no evidence linking Robin to Diana’s murder, except for the fact that he was in the same building, Melsonby village post office, when it happened. Robin says armed robbers targeted the post office on the night of her murder, but police never investigated this, preferring the prosecution theory that he was embezzling money and didn’t want Diana to find out.

So where is the £16,000 that Robin allegedly stole from their own safe that night? While the couple had normal debt levels and relationship ups and downs, they were a reasonably monied pair, and there is again no evidence that this alleged embezzling was happening.

The Post Office scandal of the early 2020s, amplified by ITV’s Mr Bates and the Post Office and, more recently, Britain’s Got Talent, also throws this plank of prosecution into the fire. Many of the wrongfully convicted postmasters now support Robin’s claim of innocence, recognising the same intractable system-bureaucracy in his case that convicted them.

With his multiple appeals to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), each one requiring new evidence, there is another social hurdle standing between Robin and his day in the Court of Appeal: the new interim Chair of the CCRC is Dame Vera Baird, veteran political feminist of the ages. Baird campaigned in favour of rape and sexual assault complainants not having to disclose their phone records, which might look contrary to the spirit of open justice to say the least (when the accused is meant to be innocent in the eyes of the law).

While Baird’s previous comments and actions as Victims Commissioner shouldn’t stand in the way of justice being carried out, Diana’s murder was also an act of violence against women - and the Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) cartel is now dominant in the British justice system. So that system will be happy that they’ve got their man in Robin - as they were when they wrongfully imprisoned Andy Malkinson for seventeen years - and will be loathe to let someone seen by the algorithm as a wife murderer go, whatever the (lack of) evidence.

As Sonia Poulton reflected back to Jane in the interview: ‘There is no evidence that links Robin to this crime, but there is evidence that links other people to it’, meaning DNA found on the murder weapon belonging to that of an investigating police officer.

A person also called in to the Crimestoppers programme to say that a person had come into a ‘crack-house’ they knew of and admitted to the murder of Diana, yet none of this appears to have been investigated by either police or the CCRC.

Dr Michael Naughton at the University of Bristol and the Empowering The Innocent organisation has pointed out that whomever is in charge at the CCRC, unless the Real Possibility Test is repealed miscarriages of justice will continue, as it is the RPT which is responsible for refusing 98% of applications - to a supposedly independent body that is meant to objectively hunt down wrongful convictions.

A Wake Up With Sonia viewer said: ‘Shocking and heartbreaking, what a story’ in comments, and as Jane said in conclusion: ‘Get rid of the Real Possibility Test. All Robin wants is his day in court and the CCRC have stopped him at every opportunity.’

By Sean Bw Parker