Last week, after a more than three decade fight for justice, Oliver Campbell successfully appealed a wrongful conviction for murder.
Wrongfully imprisoned in 1991 for murdering a shopkeeper in East London, Campbell spent 11 years in prison. The conviction followed ‘dangerous’ police interview tactics – interviewed 14 times he admitted to the shooting during the 11th interview, many of which took place without his lawyer present. Lawyers called his confession ‘a tissue of nonsense’ containing many incorrect details, many that were themselves undermined by police intelligence.
Glyn Maddocks KC, a Director of the Future Justice Project, has been supporting Campbell to overturn his conviction.
Campbell suffered a brain injury at birth and due to associated cognitive impairments has always been a vulnerable man, with experts likening his mental age to that of a 7-year-old.
In May judges announced they would reserve their judgement to consider the ‘extremely detailed’ and ‘dense’ arguments presented. Their judgment last week makes Campbell’s case one of the longest-running miscarriages of justice in history.
The case has attracted significant media coverage, with Glyn Maddocks being interviewed on the Radio 4 Today Programme (at 2:39:00), and alongside Campbell in the Sunday Times (Oliver Campbell: I’ve been cleared of murder but I’ve lost 34 years). The case was also covered by the Guardian (Court clears man with severe learning difficulties of 1990 London murder).
Maddocks expressed concern that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided to fight the appeal ‘tooth and nail’, and said the fight now moves on to compensating Campbell for his ordeal: ‘The state can lock you up for years on end for something you haven’t done. And then at the end of it says, you’re free to go. We’re now going to quash your conviction if you’re lucky, but it doesn’t pay you anything. Isn’t that wicked?’
Campbell’s legal team have also criticised an ‘increasingly conservative’ Court of Appeal after the court contemplated a retrial more than a third of a century after his wrongful conviction.
You can find out more about Oliver Campbell’s 34-year fight to clear his name in the latest edition of PROOF magazine, sponsored by the Future Justice Project.
