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scotkaz · Joined: 28 Aug 2008 Posts: 527

A former aircraft engineer who spent 14 years behind bars for a murder he says he did not commit today failed in his latest bid to win compensation.

Andrew Adams, 37, from Chapel Park, Newcastle, had his conviction quashed in January 2007 after it was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

He was 23 when he was found guilty at Newcastle Crown Court in 1993 of the shooting of retired science teacher Jack Royal.

Allowing his appeal, Lord Justice Gage, Mr Justice Silber and Mr Justice Treacy said that various "criticisms and failures" relating to the handling of his defence had the cumulative effect of being "sufficient to render the verdict unsafe".

But, they added: "We are not to be taken as finding that if there had been no such failures the appellant would inevitably have been acquitted."

Today, two High Court judges dismissed Mr Adams's challenge to a decision by the Secretary of State for Justice, in January last year, that he was not entitled to compensation for a miscarriage of justice.

Mr Justice Simon, sitting in London with Lord Justice Maurice Kay, said that his appeal succeeded on the basis that the conduct of his case by his legal representatives - relating to the failure to discover and deploy three pieces of evidence from the unused material made available by the prosecution - had been inadequate and that this had deprived him of a fair trial.

Rejecting his case, they said that it had not been shown beyond a reasonable doubt that there had been a miscarriage of justice, and the evidence which was not deployed could not be described as new or newly-discovered fact.

The March 1990 shooting of 58-year-old Mr Royal, after he answered the door to his home in Laburnum Grove, Sunniside, Gateshead, was said to have been a revenge killing for the fatal stabbing of a man during a street fight in 1987.

Mr Royal had been acquitted of murder after arguing that he had acted in self-defence.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news...r-14-years-in-prison-1545648.html

Angeline · Joined: 02 Oct 2008 Posts: 148

This is yet another case of presumption of guilt - has everyone in the CJS forgotten that an individual is supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty?

If the trial was "not fair" in law, then the individual who was the subject of that unfair trial was, and is, entitled to be presumed innocent, end of story.

This fashion for judges encouraging pointing of the finger after convictions have been overturned needs to be addressed. What they say here about the jury is nothing more than speculation, and completely outwith their remit.

Maybe they don't think the jury would have "inevitably" found the accused not guilty, but their opinion is of no account - they are supposed to be impartial interpreters of matters of law, and that's where their involvement ends. Finding that he did not have a fair trial is as far as they are supposed to go.

Also, the defence's "failure" to find evidence in the unused evidence file is surely an example of the defence having to prove their client's innocence - if that evidence would have been sufficient to undermine the Crown's case, it should have been disclosed up front, and not hidden in the unused evidence schedule.

What a farce. No wonder so many people view the British Justice System in total despair.

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