On 9 February MPs, peers, campaigners, and interested members of the public attended a meeting in parliament to hear from three men who spent a total of 77 years in prison for murders they did not commit. All have had their convictions overturned in the last two years, and none of the men have received a penny in compensation. This is despite alarming failures by the police and the courts that were described by the men in their own words, and their legal representatives who have helped them finally clear their names.
At meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Miscarriages of Justice, the group’s chair Kim Johnson MP called for urgent reform to address the ‘unconscionable cruelty’ of the current arrangements for miscarriage of justice compensation and the almost total lack of ongoing support for the wrongly imprisoned on release.
Justin Plummer told the meeting how he had spent 28 year sleeping on the floor of his cell in protest against his wrongful conviction: ‘I can’t tell you how bad it was, you can’t describe that feeling of being in no-man’s land, doing everything an anything I could to get out of this nightmare.’ Describing the fact that he is unlikely to receive any compensation for the ordeal he has been through, Plummer said ‘the battle has only just begun’, and that he would use any compensation he received to fund future treatment for his mental health conditions.
Sarah Myatt, who represented Peter Sullivan during his successful appeal after 38 years in prison, described the horrifying way in which Peter was convicted. His so-called confession was bullied and beaten out of him by police officers with no legal representation and no recording equipment present. In total he had 27 police interviews, some of which took place while he was on bail, having been picked up against by police under spurious pretences. The DNA evidence that finally exonerated him was requested multiple times by his legal team but the police service refused. It then only took the Criminal Cases Review Commission a matter of hours to access the very same evidence. Sarah explained to the audience in Portcullis House the shocking reality – that if it wasn’t for the lucky outcome of this DNA having been preserved, Peter would likely still be in prison today.
Peter was told on his release that he will likely be entitled to compensation, but it has now almost been a year since his conviction was quashed. He hasn’t received one penny from the Ministry of Justice, nothing even constituting an interim payment while his entitlement is calculated.
Oliver Campbell was represented by FJP Co-Director, Glyn Maddocks, when he successfully overturned his conviction in 2024. He is also not going to receive compensation for the 11 years he spent in prison for the murder of a shopkeeper that he didn’t commit. Glyn spoke about the begrudging way in which the Court of Appeal overturned his conviction, despite the bullying tactics of the police to coerce a confession, and the fact that in the intervening years the actual murderer had admitted to the crime.
Find out more about the event through coverage on The Justice Gap.
