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'My whole character changed'

Michael O'Brien spent 11 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit before being freed. But release came with a new set of problems

More than 20 years ago, in 1987, a Cardiff newsagent called Philip Saunders was battered to death as he arrived home, after finishing his working day with a drink at his local pub. A police investigation was launched, and a total of 42 people arrested and questioned. One of those held was Michael O'Brien, 20, who was subsequently convicted of the murder and jailed for life.

O'Brien always protested his innocence, but it took 11 years before his conviction, and those of his two co-defendants, was quashed. He was finally released in 1998, suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. He has now written a book about his experiences, and campaigns for the rights of the wrongly convicted.

At the time of his arrest, O'Brien was a painter and decorator with no previous convictions, although on the night of the murder, as he admitted, he had been out stealing a car for a joyride. Married with a young son and pregnant wife (his daughter died of cot death while he was in prison), he was stunned when the police hammered down the door and arrested him.

At the heart of the case against O'Brien was the evidence of co-defendant Darren Hall, an erratic and suggestible 18-year-old. Hall gave the police many and wildly differing accounts of his movements on the night, implicating a variety of people. In his seventh police interview, he said that while he, Hall, had acted as lookout, O'Brien and another man, Ellis Sherwood, had carried out the attack on Saunders.
Following the convictions, a "Cardiff Newsagent Three" campaign was launched, and the case was eventually taken up by solicitor Gareth Peirce. Over the years, Hall had changed his story on many more occasions before finally acknowledging that he had made it up. The case was finally re-examined by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which referred it back to the court of appeal, and the men were freed.

"I was very messed up when I came out," says O'Brien. "I would put the three of us in the same category as [Beirut hostages] John McCarthy and Terry Waite coming home after being held hostage. I am on a lot of medication still and, if I don't have it, I can't get out of bed in the morning."

Now involved with the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation, he is in support of victims having a sanctuary where they can be rehabilitated on release, with psychiatric help and the support of others who have been through the same ordeal.

But he is anxious not to be forever defined by what happened. "I don't look on myself as a victim of a miscarriage of justice but as a survivor," says O'Brien, who now has a new partner, with three children of her own. "Things are looking really good now. I feel that I'm on the mend and I want to make a success of my life and not always be known as one of the Cardiff Newsagent Three."

O'Brien is grateful to the miscarriages of justice support service run by Citizens Advice and based at the royal courts of justice, which, he says, helped him with housing and benefits advice on his release.

It took a more lengthy battle to win compensation. O'Brien received £300,000 from South Wales police and £692,000 from the Home Office, of which he has put up £50,000 as reward money for information leading to the conviction of the real murderer. "The relatives of Philip Saunders are the primary victims in this," he says. "I'm just a secondary victim. We have a common aim, we both want the guy who did this."
O'Brien, who studied law while he was in prison, and after release at the University of Glamorgan, writes in the book that the legacy of his conviction has been "illness, paranoia, a series of difficult relationships, and the need to make up for a decade spent without being able to be with the ones I love. My whole character and personality have changed ... Before I went inside, I had no difficulties with showing affection ... I didn't know what a panic attack was. I was an even-tempered youngster who didn't have the anger which I sometimes cannot help from feeling now."

Paranoid and frightened
He describes after-effects including waking in the middle of the night expecting to see a prison officer, and sleeping with a knife under his pillow to protect him from intruders who would kill him. "I was so jumpy and nervous that hearing a car horn would simply make me jump out of my skin. Large crowds around me made me paranoid, frightened, hemmed in."

O'Brien's book comes at an important time. The CCRC is facing budget cuts, which its chair, Graham Zellick, has warned will lead to further delays in cases being investigated.

One important lesson, says O'Brien, who is now writing a book about the prison service, is not to live in the past. His anger at Hall for giving the evidence that helped to jail him has passed. "When I started studying law, I discovered that people making false confessions was quite common," he says. "That helped me to understand how it could have happened. The resentment has gone."

 

Sally Clark

Following the death of Sally Clark, wrongfully convicted for the death of two of her sons, and questions regarding sources of support for victims of miscarriages of justice, James Banks, Director of the RCJ Advice Bureau wrote to The Times.

Here is his letter, which can be found on “Times Online” on 12 April 2007

 

Sir, It is important to note that the Royal Courts of Justice Citizens Advice Bureau has run a confidential advice and support scheme for victims since 2003.

This service has been funded by the Home Office, and has assisted more than 100 victims of miscarriages of justice in this time. Unfortunately, while the work we do is greatly appreciated by our clients, it is confidential and must remain so. For many it would be inappropriate for there to be further intrusion into the lives that they are trying to restore.

As a result we have been unable to attract press, and therefore public, interest in what we are doing. We hope that this may now be rectified.

JAMES BANKS, Director, RCJ Advice Bureau

19 April 2006

Crime appeal pay-outs cut by £5m

Spending on compensation paid to those wrongly convicted of crimes in England and Wales is to be cut by £5m a year, Home Secretary Charles Clarke has said.

Those who win their appeals at the first attempt will get no compensation. Others who may have spent years in prison will see any pay-outs capped.

Individual awards will be limited to £500,000 to bring them in line with the maximum amount paid to victims.

Campaigners say the cut ignores the impact of wrongful convictions.

The Home Office said anyone who has already submitted an application for compensation would still be entitled to a payment under existing measures.

It said the highest payout given to the victim of a miscarriage of justice was £2.1m, with average compensation being about £250,000.

A discretionary compensation scheme, introduced in 1985, which paid out £2m a year would be scrapped because it had become "increasingly anomalous", Mr Clarke said.

Scrapping the scheme means people will not be allowed compensation if their cases have been quashed while going through the normal appeal process - winning at the first attempt.

They would, however, be able to apply for compensation through the civil courts.

New limitations will also be placed on claimants under a statutory scheme - which will remain in force - which currently pays out £6m a year.

The Home Office said the changes were intended to speed up payments, which currently can take between five and ten years to be finalised.
Under the proposals, the level of payments to people with previous convictions would be reduced.

"The changes I have announced today will create a fairer, simpler and speedier system for compensating miscarriages of justice," Mr Clarke said.

"These changes will save more than £5m a year which we will plough back into improving criminal justice and support for victims of crime."

Mr Clarke also announced an "urgent" ministerial review of the legal test used by the Court of Appeal to quash criminal convictions which, he said, could lead to a change in the law.

He said the review would look into "what extent an error in the trial process necessarily means a miscarriage of justice".

Mr Clarke said changing the test used by appeal judges would be a "radical" move and one option would be to allow courts to declare that a case was "not proven".

'Cynical attack'

The changes to the discretionary award procedure would rule out damages being awarded to someone like Angela Cannings, who was wrongly convicted of killing two of her sons.

She served 20 months in prison for murder before her convictions were overturned on her first appeal in 2003.

Her solicitor Bill Bache told BBC News the proposals did not recognise the impact of miscarriages of justice on people's lives.

"Simply because the perpetrator of the injustice against one group of people is the state as opposed to say a criminal in the street or something of that kind, why should there be a distinction between those two?"

Gerry Conlon, who was wrongly jailed for the 1974 Guildford pub bombings, said the changes were unacceptable.

"This is not something where you spend 15 years in jail and then walk out and continue a normal life," he told BBC News. "Lives have been ruined, lives are in tatters and we need help."

Paddy Hill, one of the Birmingham Six, who wrongly served 16 years in jail for IRA bomb attacks, said he was "very angry".

"In today's society there's every possibility to be a victim of crime but you don't expect to be a victim of miscarriage of justice," he said.

Mr Hill is a founder of the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation, a charity, dedicated to promoting changes in the legal system.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said both victims of crime and those who have suffered a miscarriage of justice should be compensated in a "fair fashion" that reflects the impact of their suffering.
"In the case of a miscarriage, the need is overwhelming because it is the state that instigated proceedings in the first place," he added.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg called on the government to retain the discretionary power to provide compensation on a case-by-case basis.

Sally Ireland from Human rights group Justice said the proposal "smacks of robbing Peter to pay Paul".
"To disqualify people who may have spent many months in custody from the scheme is a cynical attack on people who have already suffered enough at the hands of the state," she said.

The Miscarriages of Justice Support Service, run by Royal Courts of Justice Citizen Advice Bureau, has also voiced concern at the plans.

It said people cleared typically leave court with a grant of £50 and need to wait about nine months to hear if they are eligible for compensation.

"Victims... experience psychological trauma, have to rebuild their lives after losing homes, family or friends, and face severe difficulties in accessing employment either due to their mental health difficulties or the prejudice of employers. Putting an artificial cap on the amount to be paid out ignores the real life impact experienced by those suffering a miscarriage of justice," said the service's director James Banks.

 

 

Press Release taken from The Observer, Sunday August 5, 2007

Busted by the borough

Alan Woods is one of a growing number of people threatened with bankruptcy by their local authority over council tax arrears. Jill Insley reports

Local councils are forcing people into bankruptcy for failing to pay small sums of council tax. London debt advice partnership Capitalise says it is helping increasing numbers of people who are being made bankrupt by local authorities for council tax arrears.

It believes these cases reflect a surge in the number of people petitioned for bankruptcy by councils nationwide: in 1992/93, local authorities in England and Wales were the petitioners in less than 1 per cent of bankruptcy cases brought by creditors, but by 2005/06 that figure had leapt to 25 per cent.

South Londoner Alan Woods, a 61-year-old former postman who retired 12 years ago on medical grounds, was first threatened with bankruptcy by Lambeth Council in 2003 for outstanding council tax debt. Lambeth says bankruptcy proceedings are on hold while it tries to come to an agreement about repayment with Mr Woods. But Capitalise, which is helping Mr Woods dispute Lambeth's claim, says he paid off the debt three years ago and believes the local authority has mistakenly set that repayment against debts that should have been written off through time constraints.

Mr Woods, a property owner with just two years to go on his mortgage, is currently paying his monthly council tax bill, and Capitalise believes that Lambeth may actually owe him money. But if Lambeth is correct and pursues his case successfully, he could lose his home. The most recent statutory demand, for £1,408, issued to him in November, said: 'You could be made bankrupt and your property and goods taken away from you.'

The stress has caused him sleepless nights and may have contributed to a decline in his health: in May he was admitted to hospital with burst ulcers and a collapsed lung, and at one point his heart stopped beating. 'My doctor told me all the worry about going bankrupt and losing my home certainly wouldn't have helped my health,' he says.

A spokesman for Lambeth Council said: 'We're not actually seeking bankruptcy in this case of non-payment of council tax and we have been working for some time to find an alternative solution. We always work with people who are genuinely finding it hard to pay or who have built up debt but whenever there is continued non-payment it ultimately impacts on other council tax payers, and as a last resort we may have to seek recovery through court action.'

Those that are made bankrupt often have to pay charges and legal fees that far outstrip the original debt. Another Capitalise client, 64-year-old Alfred Mangion, was hit with bankruptcy charges of £18,000 after running up a council tax debt of £1,500. Mr Mangion fell behind with his council tax payments through ill health and was made bankrupt by Lambeth Council in 2003. The £18,000 fee for administration of the bankruptcy was run up by an insolvency practitioner appointed by the government Insolvency Service. 'I lost all the money my mother had left me to pass on to my children. It's left me with nothing,' he says.
Mark Allan at Capitalise says councils are being too quick to use bankruptcy as a weapon: 'Bankruptcy is a sledgehammer which increasing numbers of councils appear to be using to recoup relatively small council tax arrears. There are plenty of other ways to pursue council tax debts which don't involve this traumatic and costly process for some of the poorest people in society.'

The use of bankruptcy as a tool to recover unpaid council tax is now widespread. Joanne Hankey of the Bankruptcy Advisory Service in Hull says that, five years ago, no council was using it as an option.
'Now we see more and more people with this problems and we are aware that far more councils are jumping on the bandwagon,' she says. She believes that councils trawl through Land Registry records to see which residents are homeowners, and for how long. This enables councils to gauge how much equity the debtor is likely to have in the property and whether it is worth pursuing bankruptcy.
Twenty-four councils in the north west are using bankruptcy as an option, and Manchester City Council, which has been running a trial since January 2005, has petitioned more than 1,000 times and has made about 330 people insolvent.

Ellesmere Port and Neston Borough Council has until now preferred to place a charge on a council tax debtor's property, so the owed council tax can be reclaimed when the debtor sells his home, re-mortgages or is forced to sell by the council. But the council has just decided it will now take the bankruptcy route as well, and has placed three cases in the hands of solicitors.

Sandy Fife, head of the council's revenue units, adds: 'We have a good collection rate and we pursue all the usual forms of recovery. We only use the bankruptcy option now open to us when we have exhausted every other option.'

Hankey says it is just as easy and effective for a council to place a charge on a property and force its sale as it is to petition for someone's bankruptcy. Moreover, while her organisation has seen bankrupts having to pay charges in excess of £30,000 for a £1,200 council tax debt, it costs less than £10,000 if the charge method is used.

'We believe councils are simply trying to avoid the bad publicity of forcing the sale of someone's home. If they petition for bankruptcy, the sale is forced by the court instead. We can see no other reason why councils are doing this,' she says.

The Liberal Democrats, which support the abolition of council tax in favour of an income-based tax, oppose the use of bankruptcy to recoup council tax. Vince Cable, the party's Treasury spokesman, says: 'With more than 2 million households struggling to pay council tax, this type of action is simply unacceptable. The real problem is the unfairness of council tax, as it is completely unrelated to the ability to pay. Bankruptcy is the wrong solution to a problem of the government's own making. Making people bankrupt is not going to make an unfair tax fairer.'

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