Blog entry 1st June 2016
Finally my solicitor has had a response from Kent Police/CPS
A chief inspector Gosling answered stating that our request to have the forensic evidence released for physical re-testing has been passed to an "appropriate person". Yet again the police and CPS are acting in a deceptive and evasive manner. No name was given to identify this "appropriate person". This means that we have no way of chasing up the fact that after over a month later no further response to our request has been forthcoming. Only someone, person or organisation, with something to hide would act in such a deceptive and underhanded way again and again. The only reason that the police and CPS withheld crucial evidence during my trial and are now taking every possible step to stop as accessing all of it now, is that they know it will prove my innocence.
For many of us convicted of murders that we did not commit we face an unknown future in prison. Most of us are given the highest possible security rating ('A' category level), as well as a life sentence. Unofficially this is a death sentence unless we are cleared by the court of appeal. This is no over-dramatisation or exaggeration.
No life-sentenced prisoner at the A-category level has ever been paroled (released). To achieve parole an A-cat lifer must achieve category reduction first. This will not be granted unless offence specific courses are completed by the individual. These courses require the individual to give a full and frank account of the offence - something a wrongly convicted prisoner cannot do. As such, a wrongly convicted A-cat lifer is automatically de-barred from being able to complete these courses. This means that they can never be de-categorised, progress through the system and be released. This means that a wrongly convicted A-cat life sentenced prisoner will die in prison unless their appeal is successful.
All those who work in the criminal justice system are fully aware that these unofficial death sentences are being used. Be it the prison system, probation or parole board, they are all complicit. Michael Gove and the Ministry of Justice are fully aware of this, as are the courts.
Prior to the Second World War the Nazi party in Germany imprisoned "offenders against the state" indefinitely - an unofficial death sentence. This action was condemned as inhumane and equal to mental torture by most countries, Britain included. So why do the British government and its criminal justice system believe that it is right for them to behave in a similar way? Just because they are handing down unofficial death sentences to the wrongly convicted A-cat lifer, it does not make them any better than pre-war Nazi Germany.