This sad story really starts in the summer of 1970 when a particularly ghastly murder captured the public imagination and led to a sensational trial. A young army tearaway and his soft-spoken wife were successfully charged with the brutal rape and murder of a sweet and innocent ten-year-old schoolgirl, Christine Beck. It was, on any level of imagination, a most horrendous crime, and it was deeply regretted by most people that the death penalty was not still in force. I have not been able to examine the full transcripts of the trial itself, but contemporary newspaper reports clearly indicate a "witch hunt" atmosphere in which the public wanted blood. There is no question that some forensic evidence linked Carol with her husband, but it was co-incidental, in the sense that it clearly had an alternative explanation which, if examined in a different way, clearly indicated her innocence. This evidence was by no means conclusive and should have led automatically to the "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" defence.

A national "witch hunt" atmosphere in any major crime can be a very dangerous thing because any defence of the crime, whatever the actual facts of the matter, can bring down the wrath of public opinion. The police basks in temporary glory; the Home Office sees a conviction as politically expedient and popular. The defence lawyers tended to be unsympathetic and the prosecution lawyers are quick to see the potential of a conviction to their careers. The modern equivalent of this syndrome may be the Myra Hindley and Rosemary West cases who, whether they were truly guilty or not, were convicted amidst a dangerous national atmosphere of hysteria. Like Hindley and West as well, poor Carol Hanson was told she would never be released. They all became "no-hopers". But, unlike Hindley and West, Hanson never had anyone at all fighting her corner.

After Hanson's death had been publicised sympathetically, Stephen Shaw of the Prison Reform Trust said: "We were simply not aware of this case. It is extremely rare for a woman to stay in prison for more than 20 years." Beverely Thompson of the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders added: "It would appear that the system had closed against her. I believe that this clearly demonstrates the need for more clarity when people are sentenced to long periods. Sentences with no end in sight are very hard for any individuals to come to terms with."

The evidence against Michael Hanson was overwhelming and conclusive. Despite this - a fundamental mistake - Hanson insisted on pleading not guilty, and against their own better judgement the defence decided to go along with it. During the trial, however, Hanson had not only confessed to the crime to his own lawyers, but also insisted that his wife was completely innocent. It would have been only "proper" for the defence, top QC Leslie Boreham, to decline to continue with the not guilty plea. It is possible that, knowing the evidence was conclusive, Boreham had no further interest in his client. This action on its own - ignoring a crucial and definitive confession - was tantamount to perverting the course of justice. It was even greater misconduct to allow Carol Hanson to be convicted, knowing full well of his client's confession.

But sit on it he did. They all did.

In his obviously demented mind, Hanson, a serving private in the Royal Anglian Regiment, later explained that he had allowed his young wife to be convicted alongside him because he was scared she would be unfaithful to him if he went down on his own. Who knows the full extent of the psychotic state of a violent child rapist and murderer, but it was almost certainly neither logical nor rational. It was absolutely crucial that the defence should have demanded Hanson change his plea and allow his wife's defence lawyers to plead her case separately. Instead, they stood back on an obviously conclusive prosecution and allowed their client, and his wife, to be found guilty.

The judge, Mr. Justice Melford Stevenson - a notorious "hanging judge" of the period - was quite delighted with the verdict and relished the sentencing. Because of the national hysteria over the case he had no qualms at all about imposing life sentences on both of them, and then for good measure threw in that they must not be released for at least 20 years. This went somewhat towards placating public demands for blood and it pleased the Home Office and, as the lawyers packed away their briefs and went for a congratulatory drink, the Hansons were carted off to prison.

Although this horrifying scenario is so far little more than an "ordinary" miscarriage of justice, it might, in purely legal terms, have been excusable on the grounds that judge and jury had not been appraised of all the facts. But surely, our system is designed to eventually rectify such mistakes? That is why there are appeal courts. But in Carol Hanson's case the nightmare was one from which she would never wake up. For another quarter of a century she would swim backwards through glue and never reach the light at the end of the tunnel. There must have been something in her, right to the end, that gave her faith enough to hope she would one day wake up.

The nightmare became most intense when Michael Hanson, "full of remorse", confessed first to the prison chaplain and then to his wife's lawyers, saying that she was completely innocent of the crime, and gave chapter and verse on his own involvement, insisting vehemently that it was his crime alone. Carol, a believing soul, got all her hopes up when her lawyers asked for and were granted an appeal. On paper, this exonerated her fully and at the very least MUST have created doubts as to her guilt. The only proper course would have been to order a retrial in which Michael Hanson could have made his statement to a jury and been subject to cross examination.

Incredibly, the appeal came up before John Justice Widgery, another of the last hanging judges, who listened to the confession and then studiously ignored it. Carol, he argued had been "unlucky" which you might consider as the judicial understatement of the century. It was no longer a matter of the facts of the case. It was a matter of law. Had her husband pleaded guilty she would have been entitled to a separate trial. She was "unlucky" in the sense that he had not. All her husband's evidence, both during and after the trial, had been "eccentric". "She was unlucky," he decreed. "But ill luck does not itself justify a conclusion that the verdict was unsafe." Frankly, "luck" shouldn't come into a legal argument one way or the other. If there is obviously fresh evidence, then that evidence should be properly aired and tested by judge and jury because it certainly has created at least a reasonable doubt.

That, in effect, was her last recourse to the courts. In real terms, the system threw away the keys and Carol Hanson was incarcerated for life. What added a huge poignancy to this sorry saga, was that Carol patiently bided her time. She was a model prisoner. Soft-spoken and congenial; popular with her fellow inmates which, with a child rapist and murderer is very rare. She certainly protested her innocence to anyone who might listen, but unfortunately, absolutely no one did. She never moaned, or asked again to see a lawyer, and nor did she come to the attention of any of the prison reform groups, or anyone else who may have taken up her case. Still amazingly faithful to the judicial system she waited the full twenty years of her sentence before applying for parole. She was confident that she would at last wake up.

Somewhere between her conviction in 1970 and her death in 1997, a Home Secretary, without informing her, and presently unknown, decreed that Carol Hanson, and a handful of others, should be selected as being guilty of crimes of which they should never leave prison. Her applications for parole merely got denied without explanation. There was no one around to explain why. She had no idea of this decree until, in April 28th of this year, Michael Howard, in one of his last judgements as Home Secretary, made it clear that "for some prisoners, a life sentence would be exactly what it was - for life."

Can any of us who have never been forced to face the ultimate trauma even imagine Carol Hanson's state of mind when it dawned on her fully that she would never, ever see freedom? Knowing fully, as she did, that she was innocent, and knowing there was nowhere else to turn, and finally, after a quarter of a century of inborn hope, she would never get to that light.

Maybe it was at this moment that the nightmare actually ended. She just gave up swimming and allowed herself to wallow in the glue. At 10.55 am on the 2nd May 1997 the senior medical officer at Cookham Wood jail in Kent pronounced Carol Hanson free at last. She was dead. He reported that there were no suspicious circumstances and that she had died of natural causes. Immediately, however, fellow inmates called the newspapers to suggest that they knew she had taken her own life. We'll probably never know.

The savage irony of this unhappy conclusion is that after one of the most sensational murder trials of the century, Carol Hanson had descended into complete obscurity. She became the archetypal forgotten prisoner. Until she died. Then, quite suddenly, almost before her poor corpse was quite cold, the pundits rose up to tell her agonising story.

It is, of course, just a little too late for that.

But is it too late for the judiciary to examine itself in the light of recent cases, including Carol Hanson's, in which miscarriages from a flawed system have shocked the nation and created a widespread lack of confidence in how our law works in practice? Perhaps it is something the new government, if they really wish to introduce a wind of change, may like to address forthwith.