A man who confessed to murder but then recanted now faces “a waiting game” as judges deliberate over whether to quash his conviction.
Oliver Campbell was jailed in 1991 for shooting Hackney shopkeeper Baldev Hoondle in the head.
No forensic evidence linked him to the crime and he did not match the killer’s description.
But Mr Campbell, a brain damage patient, confessed to the crime after undergoing 11 police interviews in two days.
He has since served his sentence and been released, but has always protested his innocence.
His case was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) almost 20 years after being featured on the BBC's Rough Justice.
Tuesday (May 21) concluded a three-day appeal hearing, at which the Government fought to uphold the conviction, despite psychologists saying scientific advances now provide stronger evidence that Mr Campbell has a propensity to falsely confess.
Mr Campbell’s lawyers have called his confessions “a tissue of nonsense” that included details that were provably false.
Lord Justice Holroyd, vice president of the Court of Appeal, said he and two other judges would reserve their judgment while they considered the “extremely detailed” and “dense” arguments.
”The court regards the case as raising difficult and important questions which need careful consideration,” he said.
Speaking outside the Royal Courts of Justice after the hearing, Mr Campbell said he was no legal expert and would just have to play “a waiting game”.
”The wheels of justice move very slowly,” he said.
But his barrister Michael Birnbaum seemed confident of success.
”I feel that we should win and that we are likely to have won because in order to find against Oliver they will have to dispose of so many arguments in his favour, many of which are extremely strong,” he told the Hackney Gazette.
”I ended with what I thought was the strongest, which was that the jury never heard that his co-defendant Eric Samuels had actually exonerated him and, we now know, continued to exonerate him.
”It’s a difficult one to get over, I think.”
The background
Mr Campbell's appeal, which began on February 28, exceeded its allotted two days, so had to be adjourned until this week.
The court heard in spring that Mr Campbell, brain-damaged since infancy, had the mental age of a seven-year-old.
He confessed, after what lawyers called "disgraceful", "bullying" police interviews, to shooting Mr Hoondle in a botched robbery in Lower Clapton Road in 1990.
But evidence strongly suggested the shooter was right-handed, whereas Mr Campbell’s brain damage rendered him left-handed.
His confessions included provably incorrect information and parroted a story police had suggested to him, which he had initially denied.
Eric Samuels, who admitted and was convicted of being one of the two robbers, told police Mr Campbell was innocent, even naming the supposed real killer.
He later repeated those comments to several other people, including a BBC Rough Justice reporter.
However, the evidence which got Mr Campbell to the Court of Appeal was that of two psychologists, who said scientific advances made it safer to say his confessions were likely false.
They said he was extremely vulnerable to suggestive questioning and likely to make things up to please whoever was interviewing him.
Mr Birnbaum said the Government had failed to produce any expert to dispute the evidence of the two psychologists who had testified for Mr Campbell.
Past Ruling
Prosecutor John Price criticised what he called a “substantial attack” in Mr Campbell's appeal on the conduct of the police.
He admitted that Mr Campbell “was deprived of the services of an appropriate adult” despite being “highly vulnerable”.
But he said the reliability of Mr Campbell’s confession, and the police tactics used to secure it, had been scrutinised before trial by a judge.
That judge knew Mr Campbell was vulnerable and required an appropriate adult, Mr Price said, but believed the "scrupulous" police when they denied manipulating circumstances to deprive him of an appropriate adult.
Mr Price said Mr Campbell’s current lawyers did not claim that his prior lawyers had done anything wrong in that 1991 pre-trial process, known as voir dire.
“Nothing has changed,” said Mr Price.
No Lawyer
Mr Campbell’s lawyers have questioned whether, given new evidence about his mental difficulties, his decisions to undergo interviews with no lawyer or appropriate adult were “voluntary, informed and unequivocal”.
These included his 11th interview in two days, on December 1, 1990, in which he confessed to being the shooter.
But Mr Price said Mr Campbell had a regular solicitor whom he had used on prior occasions, including for a benefits application and less serious criminal cases.
“The empirical evidence shows that he could and, prior to November 30, has decided when and from whom he wished to have assistance at a police station,” said Mr Price.
Mr Campbell's solicitor at the time complained that police had assured him as he left the police station that his client would not be interviewed again that evening, yet then questioned him in his absence.
But, said Mr Price, the trial judge ruled during voir dire that police had given no such assurance.
"The landscape has changed"
But Mr Birnbaum countered that the judge made his voir dire ruling in another era.
"The landscape has changed completely," he told the court.
He said one example was the way in which police interviewed Mr Campbell which, at the time, was normal.
"Now, it would be unprofessional conduct for police to behave in the way, to any defendant, that these police officers behaved towards Oliver," he said.
He said Mr Price had not disputed that officers made negative comments about Mr Campbell and lied to him, suggesting he had no choice but to confess because they had forensic evidence of his guilt.
He said it remained clear that parts of Mr Campbell's confessions "must be complete invention".
Another cultural change, said Mr Birnbaum, was the way Mr Campbell was cross-examined at trial, which by today's standards was "oppressive".
"The contrast between the trial that he had then and the trial that he would have today is stark," he argued.
The Other Man
Mr Price told the court that statements by Mr Samuels that his accomplice - the shooter - was not Mr Campbell were rightly excluded from the trial as “hearsay”.
He added that Mr Samuels had simultaneously pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to rob, which named his co-conspirator as Mr Campbell.
He argued that if Mr Samuels' exculpatory statements were to be introduced then his guilty plea to conspiring with Mr Campbell would have to be admitted as well.
He said Mr Samuels' statements exonerating Mr Campbell were "not capable of belief".
“At best,” he said, Mr Samuels had been "hopelessly inconsistent" - and his statements inculpating Mr Campbell were "most compelling".
"I suggest that that is a particularly arbitrary submission," Mr Birnbaum responded, saying the key question about Mr Samuels' statements exonerating Mr Campbell was: "Why would he do that if Oliver is guilty?"
Mr Samuels told people Mr Campbell was innocent repeatedly over many years, but has since died.
"Even if no one is at fault, the potential for injustice is very great," said Mr Birnbaum, saying the comments were kept out of court due to "a flaw in the law of evidence that existed at the time."
"If there is any possibility that that was true then the trial must have been unfair."
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