Woman Jailed 18 Years in IRA Bombing Released on Bail

A woman jailed 18 years ago for a deadly IRA bombing was released on bail Monday after the court learned that her confession to the crime grew out of fantasy.

Judith Ward’s attorney, Michael Mansfield, described her as a female “Walter Mitty” who dreamed about being an Irish rebel but was no bomber.

Lord Justice Iain Glidewell announced bail for Ward, 43. He said a reversal of her sentence was expected but “we are not yet in a position formally to quash the convictions.”

Prosecutors acknowledged that the confession was unreliable, and West Yorkshire police expressed regret for the years Ward spent in prison.

Ward was sentenced to 12 life terms after being convicted in the Feb. 4, 1974, bombing of an army bus that killed nine soldiers, one of their wives and two children.

Ward confessed to the bombing but pleaded innocent at her trial.

Ward would be the 18th person convicted of Irish Republican Army crimes to win an appeal since 1989.

“I have waited 18 years! It’s brilliant!” Ward shouted amid a crush of supporters.

Waiting for her as she emerged were people who had gone through the same experience--four members of the Birmingham Six, freed in 1991 after serving over 16 years on a flawed conviction of killing 21 people in a pub bombing, and Anne Maguire, who along with five members of her family served eight years with Ward after being wrongly convicted of making bombs for the IRA.

It was the discrediting of the forensic evidence offered by Dr. Frank Skuse in the case of the Birmingham Six that encouraged then-Home Secretary Kenneth Baker to allow an appeal by Ward, for it was Skuse who said she had been handling explosives.

A Royal Commission appointed after the release of those wrongly convicted of bombings is making a top-to-bottom review of the British justice system. It is expected to submit its report next year.

Mansfield told the court last week that Ward had been a “woman in crisis” who displayed a “romantic and fantasy link” with Irish lore, Irish people and Irish causes. He compared her to Walter Mitty, the daydreaming hero of one of American writer James Thurber’s short stories.