Blog entry 2nd December 2018
On the 19th of December I will have served 18 years in prison. These are 18 years of my life lost for no reason. These are 18 years lost to a judicial system that professes to be one of the best in the world, but in truth is utterly broken.
If proof of this was needed, the recent admission of the new Director of Public Prosecutions says it all. He has gone on record admitting that there may be innocent people in prison due to the police's endemic practice of withholding evidence that would substantiate a defendants case at trial. This is something the previous DPP hadn't had the integrity to admit. It is one of the reasons I have lost 18 years of my life.
Of course it doesn't help that many defence legal teams do not put in the effort necessary to gain justice for their defendant clients. Nor does it help that the police and CPS can continue to withhold evidence and obstruct we wrongly convicted even when we can prove they have acted in a deceitful and corrupt manner. It is shameful that it is made so easy for the police and CPS to wrongly convict an innocent defendant but, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) and Appeal Courts set a considerably higher threshold before they will review a case for appeal.
Public attitudes have much to answer for. When serious crime occurs public outrage is swift. Driven by a media engine that encourages an almost vigilante reaction by its consumers the police pursue a conviction at any cost ethos. For we wrongly convicted that cost is our freedom and our lives. As long as 'someone' is convicted the media gullible public don't care, the need for retribution has been fulfilled. The public is happy to remain blind, deaf and dumb.
In fact, it is easier for them to be outraged over a fictional miscarriage of justice in a TV soap opera than to open their eyes to the thousands of real miscarriages of justice that actually occur. Even the media pay more attention and time to a soap opera storyline of wrongful conviction that it does to those of us who have been wrongly convicted for real.