Sam Hallam and miscarriages of justice

It reminded me of the big miscarriages of justice in the eighties – the Guildford 4, Birmingham 6 etc.

Squeezed in at the end of a long bench in court 8 of the Royal courts of Justice, you turn your head to see a room jam packed.

The rarely used public gallery in the gods of the court was lined with faces.

There must have been some 150 people. There was standing room only.

They had all come to hear Mrs Justice Hallet’s judgement – her reasons for quashing the murder conviction of a young North London man by the name of Sam Hallam.

Most were either members of the family or supporters of a campaign to get Sam justice, which had been running for the last 5 years.

They were not disappointed.

The cheers were loud, very loud…as the judgement concluded Sam Hallam’s conviction was unsafe.

It felt like a return to some previous time.

Miscarriages of justice rarely get a mention anymore.

This one grabbed the public attention because the residents in a pocket of London called Hoxton had united in belief that Sam was innocent.

There had been a play, a documentary fronted by distant relative actor Ray Winstone, scores of newspaper articles. The only thing absent was a campaigning MP.

Read more: Murder conviction to go before court of appeal

In the end it was down to the reliability and credibility of witnesses to a gang fight in October 2004, where an 18-year-old entirely innocent Ethiopian refugee was stabbed to death.

Essayas Kassahun wasn’t the target. He had just tried to defend a friend who was.

The Metropolitan police investigation was also criticised. Several deficiencies were uncovered by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

One was a failure to even examine Sam’s mobiles phones which had been seized as presented as evidence in his trial.

As Mrs Justice Hallet noted today: “Given the attachment of young people…to their mobile phones, we cannot understand why someone, either from the investigating team or the defence team, did not think to examine the phones attributable to the appellant…..even a cursory check would have produced some interesting results.”

For the first time tonight, the Metropolitan Police acknowledged there were lessons to be learned.

Indded there are. But there is little compensation for a young man who entered prison when he was 17 to face a life sentence, and a almost a third of life later, emerges aged 24 – an innocent but undoubtedly damaged person.