Latest news with #wrongfulconviction
The Independent
a day ago
- The Independent
I'm a Post Office scandal victim – the only reason I didn't kill myself in prison was my unborn child
There was no way out. I had been locked up in a prison with blood on the walls and people self-harming all around me. I had been parted from my husband and my 10-year-old son – as well as the rest of my family – because the Post Office had successfully prosecuted me for stealing just under £75,000 in my role as a Surrey subpostmistress. My sentence, at Bronzefield Prison in Surrey, was for 15 months. The accusations from the Post Office – and my conviction, in 2010 – had brought shame on my family and led to my husband being subjected to racially aggravated physical attacks several times. I thought to myself, 'What do I have to live for?' But there was one reason in particular – the eight-week-old child growing inside me. When I was sentenced, I was two months pregnant. That child was my reason to live. While I was incarcerated, I did everything I could to protect my growing baby – constantly worried that some harm would come to it from the unpredictable behaviour of my fellow inmates and the makeshift weapons they would carry. Fortunately, my imprisonment would last just four-and-a-half months in total, which, nevertheless, still felt a huge length of time. For the rest of my sentence I had to wear an electronic tag. And that is how I gave birth to the child I had been carrying – in a hospital wearing an electronic tag. It is maybe not surprising that, because of the ordeal I had been through, my labour took three days. My son is now 14 years old. My husband Davinder got me through my imprisonment while, on the outside, our eldest son, now 24, was there for him in turn. So, I completely understand why some people may have taken their own lives after being accused by the Post Office of stealing money. Throughout the process, the Post Office would not listen to any of us when we said that there was something wrong with their Horizon accounting software. They pursued their prosecutions so vigorously; so definite were they that there was nothing wrong with their systems – that even my legal team advised me to plead guilty to everything. But I refused, as I knew I had done nothing wrong. Of course, we now know that the Horizon software was hopelessly flawed, which has led to more than 900 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses being convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting. But the toll of those convictions affected not just those individuals, but their families, too. After I was released, for a long time I would not go to the school gates with the other parents, or to cricket matches my eldest son was playing in. The actions of the Post Office denied my sons from having a normal childhood. For many years, Davinder and I didn't tell our youngest child what had happened to me before he was born. But he still came home from school one day saying that another pupil had asked him, 'Why did your mum take all that money?' Before that, when the Post Office was demanding money back that I hadn't taken, I was desperately borrowing money from family members and selling my possessions. And then, after my time in prison, the lasting effects of the tag meant that I was always afraid to go out. The Post Office prosecutions have had incalculable repercussions on so many lives, leading to much widespread trauma. This week's report on the scandal said that the Horizon inquiry had heard evidence from 59 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses who had contemplated suicide because of the pressures they were put under. After my time in prison we moved away from West Byfleet, in Surrey, where we had the shop and post office. After having had my conviction overturned, I – now 50 – have been campaigning for the Horizon victims to be given proper settlements, but also for there to be some accountability. No one from the Post Office has been held accountable for the devastation that has been wreaked on so many lives. The law is meant to protect the good from wrongdoing, while punishing the bad. But in this case, bad people have been protected, while the good have been punished. This needs to change. There will only be justice for those who took their own lives – and for those who, like me, contemplated it – when there are prosecutions. Like me, they can go to prison. But for a long time.
The Independent
a day ago
- The Independent
Has this other miscarriage of justice case just blown Lucy Letby's bid for freedom out of the water?
There was bad news recently for a nurse convicted of killing multiple patients when the Court of Appeal rejected the nurse's claim of wrongful conviction. Colin Campbell (formerly Colin Norris) had been found guilty in 2008 of murdering four elderly women patients, and attempting to murder a fifth patient, all by insulin poisoning during his time at Leeds General Infirmary. Campbell was aged 32 at conviction and will turn 50 next year. He is 17 years into a life sentence with a minimum term of 30 years. Campbell's failed appeal – the 49-page judgment was published just two weeks ago – has implications for the appeal prospects of Lucy Letby, who has multiple hurdles ahead of her as she seeks to prove she has been the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice. Not least are her convictions: Letby is serving 15 concurrent whole life sentences – seven for the murders of babies in her care, and eight more for the babies she was found to have attempted to murder, all at the Countess of Chester Hospital, a decade ago, during 2015 and 2016. Letby was aged 33 at conviction on 14 counts in mid-2023. The 15th conviction came after a retrial a year later. As things stand, she will never be freed, but events in the case since have moved at a pace that has sometimes seemed dizzying. Letby has become a celebrated cause, promoted at press conferences and in interviews by her post-trial counsel, Mark McDonald. Concerns about her case have been raised by a variety of public figures, from Lord Sumption, a former Supreme Court judge, to MP Sir David Davis, to former politicians such as Nadine Dorries and the former health secretary Sir Jeremy Hunt, who recently said the case required 'urgent re-examination'. Commentators and social media posters have struggled to keep up, not always grasping the significance of developments. When, a few days ago, Cheshire Police arrested and questioned three unnamed former executives at the Countess of Chester Hospital on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter, many people appeared to think that this was in Letby's favour – the truth at last! The circumstances of the arrests have not been made public, but I cannot help wondering if they are related to a reluctance of hospital managers to accept the claims of doctors that Letby could be responsible for the cluster of deaths. It was hard to think the unthinkable then, as now. Meanwhile, babies died or were harmed. Cheshire Police then announced they had sent a file of potential further cases against Letby to the Crown Prosecution Service, who must now decide if it is in the public interest to prosecute. This was no news to me, as I had heard months ago that the CPS was already sitting on at least three files of further murder charges which were considered 'good to go', although she has still not been charged yet. Meanwhile, in another theatrical moment, some weeks ago, McDonald went to Birmingham and held a press conference on the steps of the headquarters of the Criminal Cases Review Commission. He had invited the media to observe the delivery of his client's case that she had been wrongly convicted and that the CCRC should exercise its powers to refer the case back to the Court of Appeal, forthwith. He said the application 'blows the case out of the water' and demonstrates that 'no crime was committed'. I think there has since been at least one meeting between Letby's legal team and the commissioner leading the case – the 'nominated decision maker' as we used to call them during my own term of office as a CCRC commissioner, from 2013-2018. Ultimately, according to the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, three commissioners will sit in judgment on Letby's application, forming a case committee to decide whether the case can be referred, on the legal test that there is a real possibility the convictions would be overturned. There does not have to be a committee – the application can be rejected by a single commissioner. But given the current agonies the CCRC has suffered, over its failings in the Andrew Malkinson case and the resignations of its chair and chief executive, it would be a brave commissioner who made that decision alone. But how long will any decision take in a case of such legal and medical complexity? While her appeal's starting point is that 'no crime was committed', Letby was, lest we forget, convicted (of the first 14 counts) after a trial that lasted ten months, in which a jury heard both the prosecution and defence cases in great detail. Although I was never involved in the Colin Campbell case, it was being dealt with by colleagues before, after and during my term in office. Campbell's application – in itself complex, though not as complex as Letby's first – came to the commission in 2011 after his own failed appeal. The CCRC does not deal with just one case at a time. It has hundreds of them, thousands even, and they are divided out among caseworkers – case review managers – who work on multiple cases at the same time, trying to manage the expectations of applicants, and keep moving applications forward; updating records, chasing inquiries and keeping abreast of what is happening. Campbell's case turned on the strength of the evidence that the elderly patients had died or been harmed due to the exogenous administration of a massive dose of insulin. Two of the Letby murders were also attributed to insulin injection and Letby herself had agreed in evidence that such a poisoning must have occurred, while denying she was responsible. It took the CCRC six years to reach a provisional decision to reject Campbell's case. But it changed its mind following further submissions and agreed to refer the case to the Court of Appeal in 2021 (10 years after the initial application), based on fresh medical expert opinion but noting that the case against Campbell (like the case against Letby) had been 'wholly circumstantial'. It took a further four years for the case to be heard, due to various technical, legal and medical issues that affected the progress of the appeal. The court was emphatic in its rejection of the new evidence. It also rejected any attempt to base the appeal on statistics. As it said, the prosecution was not permitted to make claims based on the rarity of such events to support its case for guilt – and the appellants could not claim that there were other deaths in which Campbell was not involved to support its own argument that he was innocent. This all has ramifications for Letby. Her supporters often invoke the tragic case of Sally Clark, who was first convicted and then acquitted of murdering her two newborn babies. Central to Clark's conviction had been the claim of a prosecution expert Roy Meadow that the likelihood of two sudden infant deaths in the same family was 1 in 73 million. When that claim was discredited, together with some new medical evidence, the case against Clark fell apart. No such claims were made during the Letby trial, and, contrary to the claims of many, her case does not appear to hinge on statistics. Her appeal will be determined instead by the strength of the new medical evidence – from the so-called international expert panel and others – and the extent to which it undermines the case that was put at trial, when, it should be noted, many alternate explanations for the baby deaths were canvassed. You must have new evidence for an appeal. It must be capable of belief, it must be significant enough to have made a difference to the outcome and there must be a good reason why it was not called at the original trial. If Letby can cross those hurdles, she might be in with a chance. But the Campbell case – although not entirely similar to Letby – is a warning to those with high expectations that Letby's acquittal is a 'slam dunk'. The Court agreed that the case for insulin poisoning at Campbell's original trial had been overwhelming. It disagreed with claims that the new evidence at appeal completely 'changed the landscape'. The Court of Appeal had no doubt it said about the safety of Campbell's five convictions. His appeal was dismissed. Although the three Campbell appeal judges did not directly refer to Letby, they made it clear they were aware of the wider interest in the outcome of Campbell's case and seemed keen to emphasise the care they had taken, collectively in weighing the merit of the 'intricate debate between eminent scientists'. That was no doubt a marker for Letby– if her case ever gets past the CCRC and back to the Court.
The Independent
2 days ago
- The Independent
2 men cleared in 1994 killing that sent them to prison for decades. New DNA tests cast doubt
Two men who went to prison as teenagers for a 1994 killing were exonerated Thursday, after prosecutors said new DNA testing and a fresh look at other evidence made it impossible to stand by the convictions. Brian Boles and Charles Collins served decades behind bars before they were paroled; Collins in 2017 and Boles just last year. They're now free of the cloud of their convictions in the death of James Reid, an octogenarian who was attacked in his Harlem apartment. A judge scrapped the convictions and the underlying charges. Boles "lost three decades of his life for a crime he had nothing to do with,' said his lawyer Jane Pucher, who works with the Innocence Project. Collins' lead lawyer, Christopher Conniff, said Thursday's court action righted 'a terrible injustice.' 'While today's order cannot return to him the 20-plus years he spent in prison, he is happy that his name is finally cleared,' said Conniff, who's with the firm Ropes & Gray. A message was sent Thursday to a possible relative of Reid's to seek comment on the developments. A maintenance worker found Reid, 85, beaten and apparently strangled with a telephone cord, after noticing the man's apartment door was open, according to a New York Times report at the time. The apartment had been ransacked, according to the newspaper. Boles lived in the same building, and Collins was staying with him. The teens came under suspicion after they were arrested in a robbery about a week later. Collins and Boles gave confessions that their lawyers say were false and prompted by heavy-handed and threatening police interrogations. Boles recanted his admission before his trial, but he was convicted of murder; Collins subsequently pleaded guilty. Both were 17. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg 's office now says the purported confessions were contradicted by witness statements indicating Reid was alive hours after the teens claimed he had been killed. The men's trial lawyers and courts never got to see those statements. Nor were they given a lab report that undermined a detective's testimony linking Collins to a footprint found at the crime scene. Bragg, a Democrat who wasn't in office at the time, demurred Thursday when asked about officers' conduct, instead faulting 'the systems that were in place decades ago.' All the police and prosecutors who worked on the case likely retired or changed jobs years ago. While these old pieces of evidence proved to be problematic, new technology blew another hole in the case when prosecutors and defense lawyers reinvestigated it. A new round of DNA testing, using techniques unavailable in the 1990s, found that genetic material on Reid's fingernails didn't match Boles or Collins. It's not clear whose DNA it is, and Bragg said for technical reasons, the sample can't be fed into law enforcement databases to search broadly for a match there. But it could prove very helpful if a lead is developed in some other way, he said, urging anyone with any information to come forward. 'The injustice had many dimensions,' Bragg said. 'Mr. Boles and Mr. Collins — decades in prison. And a family that does not have closure. And a society that has someone at large amongst us for decades for a homicide that remains unsolved.' Boles, 48, took college classes in prison, earned a sociology degree this May and is building a career in working with marginalized people, his lawyers said. Lawyers for Collins, 49, didn't shed light on his pursuits.
Associated Press
2 days ago
- Associated Press
2 men cleared in 1994 killing that sent them to prison for decades. New DNA tests cast doubt
NEW YORK (AP) — Two men who went to prison as teenagers for a 1994 killing were exonerated Thursday, after prosecutors said new DNA testing and a fresh look at other evidence made it impossible to stand by the convictions. Brian Boles and Charles Collins served decades behind bars before they were paroled; Collins in 2017 and Boles just last year. They're now free of the cloud of their convictions in the death of James Reid, an octogenarian who was attacked in his Harlem apartment. A judge scrapped the convictions and the underlying charges. Boles 'lost three decades of his life for a crime he had nothing to do with,' said his lawyer Jane Pucher, who works with the Innocence Project. Collins' lead lawyer, Christopher Conniff, said Thursday's court action righted 'a terrible injustice.' 'While today's order cannot return to him the 20-plus years he spent in prison, he is happy that his name is finally cleared,' said Conniff, who's with the firm Ropes & Gray. A message was sent Thursday to a possible relative of Reid's to seek comment on the developments. A maintenance worker found Reid, 85, beaten and apparently strangled with a telephone cord, after noticing the man's apartment door was open, according to a New York Times report at the time. The apartment had been ransacked, according to the newspaper. Boles lived in the same building, and Collins was staying with him. The teens came under suspicion after they were arrested in a robbery about a week later. Collins and Boles gave confessions that their lawyers say were false and prompted by heavy-handed and threatening police interrogations. Boles recanted his admission before his trial, but he was convicted of murder; Collins subsequently pleaded guilty. Both were 17. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office now says the purported confessions were contradicted by witness statements indicating Reid was alive hours after the teens claimed he had been killed. The men's trial lawyers and courts never got to see those statements. Nor were they given a lab report that undermined a detective's testimony linking Collins to a footprint found at the crime scene. Bragg, a Democrat who wasn't in office at the time, demurred Thursday when asked about officers' conduct, instead faulting 'the systems that were in place decades ago.' All the police and prosecutors who worked on the case likely retired or changed jobs years ago. While these old pieces of evidence proved to be problematic, new technology blew another hole in the case when prosecutors and defense lawyers reinvestigated it. A new round of DNA testing, using techniques unavailable in the 1990s, found that genetic material on Reid's fingernails didn't match Boles or Collins. It's not clear whose DNA it is, and Bragg said for technical reasons, the sample can't be fed into law enforcement databases to search broadly for a match there. But it could prove very helpful if a lead is developed in some other way, he said, urging anyone with any information to come forward. 'The injustice had many dimensions,' Bragg said. 'Mr. Boles and Mr. Collins — decades in prison. And a family that does not have closure. And a society that has someone at large amongst us for decades for a homicide that remains unsolved.' Boles, 48, took college classes in prison, earned a sociology degree this May and is building a career in working with marginalized people, his lawyers said. Lawyers for Collins, 49, didn't shed light on his pursuits.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- The Guardian
‘We lost so many along the way': Horizon scandal victims welcome inquiry report
Twenty-three years on from his wrongful conviction, the toll taken on Parmod Kalia was still clear as he attended the publication of the first findings from the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Even by the horrific standards of the falsely-accused post office operators' experiences detailed in the report, Kalia's ordeal and the destruction it inflicted on his family stood out as particularly shocking. 'The children just didn't know what was going on and they were asking me: 'Dad have you taken the money?' And I just didn't have the answers,' Kalia recalled, having read the account on page 30 of his struggles to obtain redress even after his conviction for a theft of £22,202.01 had been quashed. His second son, Mahesh, who was 17 at the time of the conviction, told the inquiry he and his father went on to be practically estranged for a further 17 years. Parmod Kalia was also among the 59 people the report identifies as having been driven to contemplate killing themselves. 'I attempted to commit suicide a number of times until I was helped,' he said. 'There was a point too when my marriage was under strain as well, but hopefully we're rebuilding bridges again, and trying to make up for lost time, for the lost years.' Attending the publication of the report at the Oval in London, Kalia welcomed the findings of the inquiry chair, Sir Wyn Williams, that Post Office bosses should have known their Horizon IT software was faulty but 'maintained the fiction that its data was always accurate'. Yet the former post office operator – one of about 1,000 convicted of offences including theft, false accounting and fraud, based on faulty computer data between 1999 and 2015 – suggested the Post Office was still dragging its feet and 'playing dirty tricks' on the topic of compensation. 'As far as the Post Office is concerned, I think it would still be better if someone spoke to me face to face, looked me in the eye and just acknowledged and accepted they have done wrong, and continue to do so,' he said. 'That could be due to an institutional issue, but I think it could also be a personal grudge as well against me as one of the original people who went to court and sought to challenge them. It's a case of 'how dare we?' And it hangs over me every day.' For those survivors in attendance, the memories of the roughly 350 people who died before this day came weighed heavily, including 13 who it is believed may have taken their own lives. 'We've lost so many people along the way and we think of them all the time, even on days like this, which is a good day, but it's why I would urge government to act on this report's findings as soon as possible as we're not getting any younger,' said Seema Misra, a former Surrey post office operator who was wrongly jailed while pregnant. Misra said she and fellow victims of the scandal had been impressed by Williams's work, even if they wanted to see firmer deadlines for the compensation that remained unpaid for many. 'There are more reports coming but this does at least feel like the beginning of the end.' Scott Darlington, a branch owner-operator in Cheshire whose suspended prison sentence for false accounting has been quashed, raised an eyebrow at the finding that the government and Post Office should make a public announcement defining the phrase 'full and fair financial redress'. 'It's a scathing report, but I think it could have been more scathing to be honest. Does it really take five years to come up with a definition of what is 'full and fair'?' says Darlington, who is still waiting for compensation. 'I just basically want everything that I've lost, not an offer on what they are prepared to do … If it was in America we'd all be getting tens of millions of pounds a year, but we just want what we deserve for what we have been put through, no less.' Darlington said he had 'speed read' parts of the report and would look over it later, but for now the day was about coming together with what has come to be almost a surrogate family. 'Over the years we've made deep friendships, so it's nice to see everyone again and feel at least that we might be heading towards some kind of final resolution,' he said. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Asked about Paula Vennells, who was the chief executive of the Post Office between 2012 and 2019 and is a central figure in the scandal, Darlington said he wasn't sure about how much she featured in the minds of victims. 'Everybody is still hoping that she has to pay for it really, and not just her. I mean, there's plenty of people across all the teams. The tentacles go far and wide as far as people who were complicit.' Jo Hamilton, one of the best-known victims of the scandal, was glowing about the report. 'Oh, it's a very good piece of work and there's a finger wag from Sir Wyn at the government I think because it is effectively in charge of all the schemes now. Five years on, he's just told them to define full and fair because obviously what we think is full and fair isn't what they think is full and fair and they have until 10 October to define that.' 'When you've had your claim professionally worked out and they just come back to you with the most ridiculous offer is incredible,' said Hamilton, who was wrongly accused of stealing more than £36,000 from the post office branch she was in charge of at the time in South Warnborough, Hampshire. To avoid a jail sentence, she pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of false accounting, and was prosecuted in 2006. Hamilton has now at last been paid in full, after settling at 80% of what she had claimed for before it was topped up, but was resolute about continuing the struggle on behalf of others. 'I'm still fighting for everybody … I still can't shut the Post Office out of my life until everyone is paid.' One line in particular jumped out of the report for Hamilton, where Williams wrote of how the problems with the Horizon IT system would have been no secret at various levels of the company. 'I am satisfied from the evidence that I have heard that a number of senior, and not so senior, employees of the Post Office knew or, at the very least, should have known that Legacy Horizon was capable of error,' wrote the inquiry chair. For Hamilton, this brought great satisfaction. 'To me, it means everybody. I really picked it out. They can't all have been ignorant of what was going on and it went from the foot soldiers all the way up. I think the next part, when comes to any criminal proceedings, could be very interesting.'
