August 1st: Today’s Feature

August

They put a leather belt around her

13 feet of tape and bound her

Handcuffs to secure her

And only God knows what else,

She’s illegal, so deport her

Said the Empire that brought her

-Benjamin Zephania

Joy Angelia Gardner (née Burke, 29 May 1953 – 1 August 1993) was a 40-year-old Jamaican mature student living in London, England, United Kingdom. Gardner died after being detained during a police immigration raid on her home in Crouch End, when she was restrained with handcuffs and leather straps and gagged with a 13-foot length of adhesive tape wrapped around her head. Unable to breathe, she collapsed and suffered brain damage due to asphyxia. She was placed on life support but died following a cardiac arrest four days later. In 1995, three of the police officers involved stood trial for Gardner's manslaughter, but were acquitted.

The case became a cause célèbre for civil rights and justice campaigners, and for the first time brought wide public attention to what the Modern Law Review called "the inhumanity of the methods used routinely in the execution of deportation orders". Despite continuing pressure by campaigners, no coroner's inquest or public inquiry into the circumstances of Gardner's death has been held.

Joy Gardner was born Joy Burke in Long Bay Beach, Jamaica, in May 1953, Her mother, Myrna Simpson, emigrated to the United Kingdom from Jamaica – then still a British colony – in 1961, with the intention of sending for her child once she had achieved some financial stability, a common and accepted practice at the time. Simpson subsequently became a British citizen. Prior to 1981, Gardner would have had the right to British citizenship through her mother, but changes to immigration legislation in the British Nationality Act 1981 meant this was no longer possible. Gardner first travelled to England in 1987, leaving a daughter behind in Jamaica. She entered the country legally using a six-month visitor's visa, but overstayed when the visa elapsed. She was pregnant at the time of her arrival, and subsequently gave birth to a son.

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A flight to Jamaica was arranged for Gardner in the summer of 1992, but she failed to attend at the airport, stating later that she had not received notification to do so. Her solicitor Djemal Dervish lodged a further appeal, citing "compelling compassionate circumstances".

While living in the UK, Gardner moved home several times but remained in contact with the police, her mother's local MP Bernie Grant and immigration services. By the summer of 1993 she was studying Media Studies at London Guildhall University and living in a housing association home in Topsfield Close, Crouch End. On 28 July 1993, the day the police raided Gardner's home, Charles Wardle's immigration officer procrastinated to serve deportation order to Dervish her representative. Wardle, the immigration minister, later admitted that the letters were held back and timed to arrive after the raid to prevent any further judicial appeals being made and to avoid giving Gardner any notice of her deportation, which was to take place at 3.00pm the same day from Heathrow Airport.

At 7.40 am on 28 July 1993, three officers from the ADG, accompanied by two officers from Hornsey police station and an official from the UK Immigration Service, raided Gardner's home with orders to "detain and remove" her and her 5-year-old son for immediate deportation to Jamaica. She suffered respiratory failure almost immediately and was taken to the Whittington Hospital, North London. She died on 1 August 1993 due to cerebral hypoxia and cardiac arrest, without regaining consciousness.

Gardner was examined by four forensic pathologists who concluded that the cause of death was cerebral hypoxia. As she had suffered a multiple head injury during the struggle samples of brain tissue were subsequently examined by an independent neuropathologist to establish whether brain injury may have caused the hypoxia rather than asphyxiation as a direct result of the gag and tape. Two further tests were then conducted by independent neuropathologists who both dismissed the head injury as a factor.

On 2 June 1995, Detective Constable John Burrell was acquitted on the directions of the judge, Mr Justice Mantell. Detective Sergeant Linda Evans and Detective Constable Colin Whitby were found not guilty by the jury on 14 June 1995. Following the trial, the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) announced that there would be no internal disciplinary inquiry. The PCA said that "a disciplinary charge of authority would in substance be the same as the criminal charge of which the officers have been acquitted" and "an officer cannot be tried on both criminal and discipline charges for the same offence".

As a result of Gardner's death, the use of mouth gags was suspended by the Commissioner of the MPS in August 1993 and banned by Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, in January 1994.

In February 1999 Gardner's family brought a civil suit against the police for compensation.

In July 2020 Haringey Council announced the naming of a new housing development on Templeton Road as 'Joy Gardner House'