"Let Him Have it, Chris"

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The Bentley case became a cause célèbre and led to a 40-year-long campaign to win Bentley a posthumous pardon, which was granted in 1993, and then a further campaign for the quashing of his murder conviction, which occurred in 1998.

Although only Craig had fired the shot, both were sentenced by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard, to be hanged. A play Example, starring Harry Miller as Bentley, was devised by the Coventry Belgrade TIE Team for fifth and sixth form students and toured from 1975. They are at least reading copies, complete and in reasonable condition, but usually secondhand; frequently they are superior examples.Some terminology that may be used in this description includes: VG+/VG+ A book in slightly better than Very Good Condition with a dust jacket that is in slightly better than Very Good Condition. In 1948, Bentley and another youth were arrested for theft and sentenced to three years at Kingswood Training School on what is now Kennard Road, Bristol. Niven Craig, despite being a bloodthirsty hood, takes an avuncular liking to Derek, and even gives him his own jacket. The first to reach the roof was Police Constable Sidney Miles, who was immediately killed by a shot to the head.

While breaking into a warehouse, Craig shoots and kills a police officer, PC Sidney Miles, resulting in Britain's most controversial court case. After the subsequent broadcast of the BBC Play for Today adaptation of To Encourage the Others, directed by Alan Clarke and starring Charles Bolton, Haler sought to deny that he had given any specific estimate of the size of the bullet that killed Miles beyond being "of large calibre". In law school we discussed a criminal case where the defendant faced the death penalty based on his use of the ambiguous phrase, “Let him have it!Very like Ludovic Kennedy's book about the Evans/Christie murders, 10 Rillington Place, in which Kennedy paints Timothy Evans as a gentle, guileless creature ripe for exploitation by the Macchiavellian Christie, MJ Trow paints Derek Bentley as an innocent, simple man-child led astray by Chris Craig. The true story of Derek Bentley (Christopher Eccleston), hanged, aged 19, in the 1950s after a controversial decision holding him responsible for the murder of a police officer.

Witnesses to the crime reported hearing Bentley shouting, “Let him have it, Chris,” before the trigger was pulled.

Scientific evidence also showed the three police officers who testified about Bentley shouting "Let him have it" had lied under oath. He later made a number of statements to police officers sitting with him in hospital, displaying a hatred of the police and a total lack of remorse at what he had done. The outcome of the trial, and Home Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe's failure to grant clemency to Bentley, were highly controversial.