James Ashley | |
|---|---|
 Family photograph of Ashley | |
| Born | 1958 |
| Died | (aged 39) St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, England |
| Cause of death | Gunshot |
| Other names | Jimmy Ashley |
James Ashley (1958 – 15 January 1998) was a British man who, while unarmed and naked, was shot dead by police in his flat in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, on 15 January 1998. Armed officers raided the building on the suspicion that Ashley kept a firearm and a quantity of cocaine there, and to arrest him and another man in connection with a stabbing. Neither a firearm nor a significant quantity of drugs was found, the other man was not present, and it later emerged that Ashley was not implicated in the stabbing. Ashley, likely woken by the noise of the raid, was out of bed when an armed police officer entered his bedroom. On seeing the officer, Ashley raised one arm and the officer reacted by firing a single shot. Later that morning, Sussex Police chief constable Paul Whitehouse held a press conference in which he praised the conduct of the operation.
Two inquiries were held by other police forces under the auspices of the Police Complaints Authority (PCA), both of which strongly criticised the raid. The first found that the use of armed officers breached national guidelines, that the raid team had been inadequately trained, and that the officers in charge of it had received no training for their roles and had misrepresented intelligence to gain authorisation for the operation. The second inquiry accused Whitehouse, Deputy Chief Constable Mark Jordan, and Sussex's two assistant chief constables of colluding to obstruct the first. It suggested that Whitehouse knowingly gave false statements in his press conference, and recommended criminal charges against three of the four. The officer who shot Ashley was charged with murder in 2001 but acquitted on the grounds of self-defence. The officers who led the operation were charged with misconduct in public office and were also acquitted. No criminal charges were brought against the chief officers, but Jordan and Whitehouse both faced disciplinary proceedings. Jordan was suspended and allowed to retire in 2001. Whitehouse resigned in the same year under pressure from the Home Secretary, David Blunkett. His successor publicly apologised to Ashley's family in 2003.
Ashley's father and son sued the police for negligence and battery in Ashley v Chief Constable of Sussex Police. The police offered to settle all damages under the action for negligence and the other claims were struck out at the High Court, which the family appealed. The case reached the House of Lords (then the United Kingdom's highest court), where the appeal was successful. The lords confirmed that the threshold for a plea of self-defence in a civil case was higher than in a criminal one and that it was for the litigants, not the judge, to decide which causes of action to pursue, even where no further damages were available.
Ashley's death has been compared to other mistaken police shootings in the United Kingdom, including those of Stephen Waldorf, John Shorthouse, Harry Stanley, and Jean Charles de Menezes. It was one of the cases considered in a 2003 report by the PCA which recommended stronger control of armed operations and equipping armed officers with less-lethal alternatives such as tasers.