- Two men wrongly jailed for the murder of the newspaper
boy Carl Bridgewater were ordered yesterday to pay "board and lodgings"
for the 18 years they were in prison. In a ruling condemned as "sick"
by prison campaigners, the Court of Appeal agreed with a Home Office-appointed
assessor that the cousins Michael and Vincent Hickey should lose a quarter
of loss-of-earnings compensation for their free food and accommodation
inside.
-
- The verdict means the Hickeys, victims of one of the
worst miscarriages of justice in post-war Britain, will lose £60,000
each, about £60 for each week they were locked up.
-
- In a third case, the court ruled that Michael O'Brien,
another wrongly convicted man, should pay his "saved living expenses"
for the 11 years he spent in prison after he was convicted of the murder
of a Cardiff newsagent.
-
- A lawyer for the Hickeys, who endured repeated intimidation
and beatings from fellow prisoners, said they were outraged by the "palpably
unfair" ruling.
-
- The Hickeys were jailed in 1979, with James Robinson
and Patrick Molloy, after they were convicted of killing 13-year-old Carl
at Yew Tree Farm, Wordsley, West Midlands, a year earlier. The boy died
from a shotgun blast in a break-in at the farm.
-
- During a 25-day trial at Stafford Crown Court, the Crown's
case hinged on a "confession" from Mr Molloy, fraudulently obtained
by police who showed him a fabricated confession from Vincent Hickey. Molloy
died in prison aged 53.
-
- After a long campaign for justice, involving a 144-day
hunger strike by one of the cousins, the "Bridgewater Three"
were freed in 1997 when the Court of Appeal quashed their convictions.
In 1998 the CPS said that none of the seven police officers alleged to
have made up evidence would be prosecuted.
-
- Michael Hickey, 42, was awarded £990,000 compensation
and Vincent Hickey, 49, £506,220 by the Home Office's independent
assessor, Lord Brennan QC, who said living expenses should be taken off.
A High Court judge, Mr Justice Maurice Kay, ruled last April that the deductions
were wrong but Lord Brennan appealed, saying his decision was "lawful
and reasonable".
-
- Yesterday the Home Office stressed that the decision
to deduct money for lodging lay with the assessor and did not set a precedent
for other cases.
-
- Susie Labinjoh, solicitor for the Hickeys, said her clients
were "extremely disappointed". She said that while in prison,
the cousins had the stigma of being known as child killers and were subjected
to appalling conditions, including their food being regularly adulterated
with phlegm and glass.
-
- Ms Labinjoh said: "They could not comprehend how
anyone aware of the circumstances of their imprisonment could suggest that
they profited from it in any way."
-
- Mark Leech, editor of The Prisons Handbook, said: "It
has to be the sickest of all sick jokes. Can you imagine Terry Waite getting
a bill for the living expenses he saved during his five years wrongly held
in the Lebanon?"
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
-
- http://news.independent.co.uk/
- uk/legal/story.jsp?story=546109
|
