Among the first cases investigated by Leonard Leigh when he joined the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) were the hanging of Mahmood Hussein Mattan and the imprisonment for life of Patrick Nicholls. Neither, he helped reveal, had committed the murders for which they had been sentenced.
As a driving force behind the organisation created to examine claims of miscarriage of justice, Leigh, who has died aged 89 after a stroke, may have been modest and mild-mannered, but his enthusiasm, high principles and meticulous, case by case examinations resulted in the overturning of numerous wrongful convictions.
