AMAZING BRITISH "LIVING EXPENSES" NONSENSE: INNOCENT MEN TO PAY FOR JAIL TIME?

Cleared Bridgewater pair win full payout

Two men wrongly convicted of murdering 13-year-old newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater in Wordsley, West Midlands, are appealing against "living expenses" deducted from compensation. Michael Hickey and his cousin, Vincent, had their convictions quashed in 1997. They spent 18 years in jail after being convicted in 1979 for the shooting of Carl in 1978 at Yew Tree Farm. The Home Office-appointed assessor Lord Brennan QC awarded Hickey 990,000 pounds and Vincent 506,000, subject to an appeal ruling of 25 per cent deductions.

The cousins are appealing against a Court of Appeal ruling that the Independent Assessor was entitled to make a 25 per cent deduction from compensation for loss of earnings made to victims of long-running miscarriage of justice cases to reflect the necessities of life which they would have had to buy from their wages had they been at liberty.

It is contrary to justice and common sense for the Home Office to deduct "living expenses" from compensation paid to men who spend years in jail because of miscarriages of justice, the House of Lords was told on Monday. Barrister Philip Engelman told five Law Lords: "It is revolting to the ordinary man's sense of justice to have a wrongfully convicted person effectively being asked to pay for his board and lodgings during the time he was incarcerated." Mr Engelman said the deductions added "insult to injury" to men who had spent years in jail because of a miscarriage of justice.

The Home Office is trying to benefit from something which had been imposed on the men, he told the panel of Law Lords headed by Lord Bingham. "We say that there should be generous compensation as a matter of domestic law and international law and it is an antithesis of such generosity to deduct from the men the costs of their accommodation."

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Background excerpt below. The pair were jailed on the basis of evidence fabricated by police -- police who were, of course, never brought to justice for their deeds. The real murderer has never been found

For the evidence which eventually led to the men's release showed tampering on a criminal scale. Mr Molloy always claimed that he had been tricked and intimidated into signing a false confession. He was shown a confession that one of the other co-accused, Vincent Hickey, had allegedly signed. The new evidence produced to the Court of Appeal showed that the Hickey "confession" had been forged by policemen from the No 4 Regional Crime Squad.

The evidence arose out of an "Esda" test on Mr Molloy's confession, which revealed the imprint of the forged signature written on the page above. Since Mr Hickey was several miles away in another police station, being questioned by different detectives, the confession could not have been genuine. Mr Molloy's claim that he had been shown this forgery was never believed in the many reviews of the case since 1978.

Tragically, the Hickey signature was discovered in 1990, but until two weeks ago nobody realised its significance. Great credit should go to Jim Nichol, solicitor to the men, who decided to go back over all the evidence in preparation for their latest appeal. Mr Molloy's confession was always crucial to the case against all three men since there was no forensic evidence linking them to the scene, no murder weapon and no witnesses.

The West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, which included the detective who falsified Mr Hickey's signature, was wound up in 1989 after evidence came to light of other fabricated confessions and planted evidence in 23 cases during the 1980s.

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