Miscarriage of justice victims get bill for wrongful jailing

Two brothers-in-law from north Belfast have been forced to pay a total of £82,000 for their illegal detention in a British prison in the north of Ireland, despite being found innocent and their convictions fully overturned by the courts.

In a dystopian climax to a judicial nightmare, Billy Gorman and Paddy McKinney have had 25 percent of their compensation for a miscarriage of justice withheld from them for “living costs” during their wrongful imprisonment. They are now locked in a legal battle to get the money back.

In 1979, the brothers-in-law from north Belfast were wrongly convicted of an IRA attack five years earlier on Donegall Street in Belfast city centre, when they were aged 14 and 17.

Neither were involved, but signed confessions after being beaten during three days of RUC interrogation and coercion. A pro-unionist, non-jury court found them guilty after a farcical ‘trial’.

Their RUC interview notes were extensively rewritten to make them appear guilty — a fact that led to their convictions being quashed by the Court of Appeal in 1999.

Billy served 14-and-a-half years in prison and Paddy 11 years. After their release, Billy was awarded £194,000 in compensation, while Paddy was handed £134,000.

But they then had a quarter of their payments taken back by the British government.

The extraordinary reason given for this was the savings they made on living costs while they were locked up.

Both men are now fighting to be reimbursed, comparing their treatment to having to pay rent for spending a total of 25 years locked in cells for a murder they did not commit.

“The government appointed an independent assessor who made the decision that the 25% would come out. They charged us rent for being wrongly jailed,” Billy told the Sunday Life newspaper.

“At least on the outside I would have had a choice about what to spend my money on, but I was in jail eating substandard food and lying on beds that left many people with serious back injuries, and they’re charging me £48,000 for that. You’d think we’d been living in a hotel instead of a jail.”

“Their logic is the assessor has to put you back in the financial position you were in before you were arrested,” he added.

“So if you were on the outside working on a building site, you’d be paying money for food, you’d be paying money for rent, but because you’ve been with us locked up for nearly 15 years, you’ll pay us.”

For both Billy and Paddy, the principle of not having their compensation reduced is far more important than the actual payout amounts.

They lost some of the best years of their lives — their entire 20s and early 30s — locked in cells for a murder they did not commit. To then have their compensation decreased for having to endure that misery means they are being punished twice.

Although Billy and Paddy protested their innocence for a decade, it wasn’t until the early 1990s that they realised there was hope of having their convictions overturned.

New forensic testing was key to the case. Because their original trial was so controversial their defence barrister John Curran, who would later become a judge, insisted on their interview notes being lodged with the courts rather than the police.

This meant that the documents were preserved and when forensically tested showed they had been rewritten at length.

Billy said: “That’s why we are having this conversation today because without John Curran’s insistence and those notes being kept, there would have been no appeal.”

Urgent Appeal