UK ends 18-year travesty of justice

The verdict of murder against two killers of Stephen Lawrence in England this week is a historic moment for British justice, and finally shows that there is a determination to force London's police force to do something about its low standards of policing.

In 1993, black youth Lawrence was stabbed to death on a street in south London. But bad policing meant that what should have been a simple case of murder became a travesty of justice that has challenged the integrity of Scotland Yard and the English Courts. The gross mismanagement of the case indicated a terrible lack of professional standards, or deliberate failure attributed to institutional racism. It has been an 18-year disaster that required a change in the law to allow retrials in cases when new evidence has been found, as well as four police investigations, two trials, a judicial enquiry and an inquest. The only good news is that what was bad has been put right.