Justice is a flimsy thing, the more so when class prejudice and self interest becomes involved

On that memorable October day in 1989, when I cheered Gerry Conlon as he emerged with such joy onto the street outside the Old Bailey, after finally being set free on being acquitted along with the other three people who had become known as the Guildford Four, the last thing on my mind was that 20 years later victim's of miscarriage's of justice would still be emerging from the bowls of the UK judicial system. Yet yesterday Sean Hodgson, like Gerry and many others before him, was finally found not guilty by the Appeal Court after having served 27 years in jail for something he did not do.

When the Birmingham Six gained their freedom, Paddy Hill one of the freed men, reminded us that the catalogue of wrongful convictions were be no means an Irish phenomena. As during his long years of wrongful imprisonment he had come across countless men whom he believed were in exactly the same predicament as he had been, the only difference being they had no one on the outside to mount campaigns on their behalf.

Thus they were doomed to rot in jail, as due to the catch 22 clause in the parole act, which makes an admittance of guilt a prerequisite to be released on parole. Many of those who are wrongfully imprisoned will either have to lie and admit to a crime they did not commit, or spend the rest of their lives in jail.

Since that day Paddy’s words have proved to be true. Like almost all the previous high profile cases of wrongful imprisonment, Sean Hodgson was not merely a case of the Jury getting it wrong. True this happened, but the common thread within almost all the wrongful imprisonment cases that have emerged to date, is that of a vengeful judicial system that not only refuses to admit it has imprisoned the wrong person, but it is prepared to go to great lengths to cover up its misdemeanors. Exhibits disappear, are claimed to be lost, destroyed or are hidden from the defense, pages are torn from police notebooks, DNA samples taken at the time of the crime vanish into thin air.

Justice is a flimsy thing, the more so when class prejudice becomes involved, nevertheless for all its weaknesses, the jury system is the best that humanity has evolved and it works well as long as the jury has the full facts placed before it and without prejudice.

Human beings make mistakes, but when people’s freedoms are involved, it is simply not good enough for those who govern us to release those they have abused and stuff their pockets with gold. In a case like Mr Hodgson, when it is clear some form of corruption kept him in prison for at least a decade after his innocence became known, heads must roll.

That to date this has never occurred, despite the countless miscarriage of justice cases that have emerged since the late 1980s, makes it a certainty that many more people will emerge from prison having had the best years of their life stolen by the State.