Death of Justice, The

By Michael O'Brien

The harrowing autobiography of Michael O'Brien (one of the Cardiff Newsagent Three) who was imprisoned for 11 years for a murder he didn't commit. Michael received the largest payout ever by the police to anyone who has been wrongly convicted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Y Lolfa
• Release date: Jan 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781847716767

Book preview

Death%20of%20Justice%2c%20The%20-%20Michael%20O%27Brien.jpg

Some names have been changed on request

First impression: 2008

© Michael O’Brien, Greg Lewis & Y Lolfa Cyf., 2008

This book is subject to copyright and may not be reproduced by any means except for review purposes without the prior written consent of the publishers.

The publisher acknowledges the financial support of the Welsh Books Council.

Cover photograph: Daryl Corner

Cover design: Y Lolfa

ISBN: 978 1 84771 048 2

E-ISBN: 978 1 84771 676 7

Published in Wales by

Y Lolfa Cyf., Talybont, Ceredigion SY24 5HE

e-mail [e-mail]

website www.ylolfa.com

tel [phone]

fax 832 782

Foreword

Iused to find the words ‘miscarriage of justice’ inadequate to describe the horror of wrongful conviction. The phrase implied to me an accident, and wrongful convictions can never be written off as accidental. Later, however, I realised that the description, of course, meant ‘death’, and this is exactly right, a total death of justice.

For the victim, what does this mean, what does it feel like hour by hour, day by day? None of us know who have not had it happen to us. Is it like being buried alive? Is it to feel, day by day, that you are a dead man walking? And how does that fit, day in and day out, with the reality of being alive, conscripted into a regime demanding total obedience with the most petty and cruel of rules, inflicted upon you by jailers wielding absolute power over you? How does any human being deal with finding himself alive, but dead to the world, where he is intended to remain possibly for the rest of his life? Michael O’Brien, trapped underneath the rubble of an entirely false accusation, could well remain buried to this day. He was very young when disaster hit him, losing his infant child and then his wife at the time that he was on trial for his life, without any experience of the world that could equip him to handle even those intense personal, private catastrophes, and yet against all the odds he fought his way out and overturned his conviction.

To achieve this he had to battle on two fronts; the first against the prison authorities, as he fought for survival, and second, in an equally ambitious battle, to achieve the ear of anyone who could help him overturn his conviction. To survive in prison many prisoners find it easier to give up hope, to accept what comes without questioning its legitimacy. The harder path to take commits the imprisoned man to question, confront, argue and challenge. In prison this is a recipe for punishment and yet more punishment, heaped onto the brutality of a life sentence without meaning and without end. This was the course that Michael O’Brien chose to take. I have no doubt that his choice cost him dearly and affected him deeply, but I can only respect the courage that it took to sustain throughout his formative years in his twenties and then thirties. He lost all of his youth, and emerged from prison as a deeply emotionally scarred and desperate individual and remained so for many years thereafter. Years of battle, do not, for the warrior concerned, lead to an easy existence once he has left the battlefield for civilian life and unaccustomed peace.

So far as his conviction, Michael O’Brien’s approach was identical. Buried as he was under the verdict of a jury, and a rejected appeal, he shouted from under the rubble until, eventually, his angry cries were heard, and he could begin to find, inch by inch, a brick to hold onto, to haul himself further towards the daylight, and nearer to where others could make out what his cries were saying, and to construct a rudimentary lifeline that might lead to his case being reopened.

As one individual who heard Michael O’Brien’s angry shouts after he had been in prison for a decade, I had direct experience over the following years of the extent and desperation of that anger, often hurled in my direction, early in the morning, late at night, the fury constantly bubbling, provoked by the daily cruelties and injustices of prison life, and the never-ending horror of being wrongly convicted of murder. However uncomfortable it was to be the recipient, I could see and respect a demanding intellect that would not settle for delay, and would not settle for defeat. There was evidence to be found, with difficulty, and there were countless obstacles to overcome. The ways in which wrongful convictions are achieved in the first place are not necessarily easily uncovered many years later; the casual coercion and intimidation of witnesses and defendants that were custom and practice by significant numbers of police forces over decades, was never challenged adequately, if at all at the time and the trail goes very cold. Vulnerable defendants and witnesses were as a matter of routine, again over decades, regularly persuaded into giving wholly false testimony. These practices were precisely what led to the conviction of Michael O’Brien.

Intelligently, when the opportunity of an appeal finally came, Michael O’Brien saw very clearly that he should not only fight his own wrongful conviction, but, in parallel, the wrongful conviction also of his co-accused, Darren Hall, whose false confession was brought about by police wilfully capitalising upon his very obvious propensity to produce wholly false and imaginary testimony. Thus, in the appeal itself, the vulnerabilities of Darren Hall came to be properly addressed for the first time, and three convictions fell simultaneously.

For his own sake I would have wished that Michael O’Brien could at that point, have walked away from the rubble and found a life completely distant from the horror of the past. I applaud him however, despite that feeling, for his continuing fight to achieve acknowledgement of past practices and a complete purging of the methodology of the police force which brought about his own wrongful conviction and, in identical ways, brought about the wrongful convictions of many other defendants. Each instance of a wrongly convicted person undoing that wrongful conviction carries with it a glaring history of exhausting struggle. To go on from there and continue, on behalf of others is remarkable. However difficult and uncomfortable observing and attempting to help in part of that struggle was, I regard myself as having been privileged in some small way to have worked side by side with Michael O’Brien as he clawed his way finally to freedom.

Gareth Peirce, 2008

Chapter One

42 Suspects

The Murder

On the night of Monday, October 12, 1987, a Cardiff newsagent named Phillip Saunders was battered over the head five times as he arrived home. A short time earlier, at about 11.05pm, he had been finishing his working day with a drink in a local pub. He then drove home. At 11.19pm an anxious neighbour rang 999 and Mr Saunders was found lying in the small back garden of his home.

He died five days later, without regaining consciousness.

Mr Saunders was 52 and the owner of three city centre kiosks selling cigarettes, newspapers and sweets. He was well-known, popular; everyone called him Icky. As a matter of routine, he called at his kiosk at the central bus station off Wood Street each evening at about 9.30pm to collect the day’s takings. He would then put the money in his van and drive home, generally after a swift pint. Detectives later said that Mr Saunders had been a sitting target for attack. It was well known he carried money home, and they described the area around the nearby gents’ toilets in Wood Street as a well known haunt of homosexuals and members of the criminal fraternity.

When the police arrived at his home that night they found him critically injured. They also found a spade stained with skin or bone and blood, a £10 note and a £1 coin in the garden. There was no money on him. A newly-purchased bottle of whisky was near his body. A few mouthfuls had been taken from it.

The unchallenged evidence of pathologist Professor Bernard Knight was that Mr Saunders received five blows to the head, each delivered with very great force. His skull was shattered. The spade found in the garden, in Professor Knight’s opinion, could have caused all or any of the injuries.

The police mounted a major investigation, which involved the arrest and questioning of 42 suspects. It was a dragnet. The killer had left no real evidence so the detectives began to question known local criminals. Their suspect list was stocked with people who had form for robbery, or other theft or dishonesty charges – even blackmail. But there were others with violent histories. One had even been done for striking someone with an axe.

I had no previous convictions but was one of those picked up and this is my story.

As murder investigations go it was an unusual one. Not just for the brutality of the crime, although it was horrific enough, but for the confession that sent three men to jail. Two of us could not understand why the third – a man I met quite by chance on the very day of the murder – admitted to a killing we knew none of us had carried out.

It is also a story about oppressive police questioning; a horror story about being at the centre of a police inquiry which is careering out of control. It’s about spending more than 11 years in custody struggling to clear my name of murder, and spending many more years trying to fight for real justice, and it’s about the stigma that label ‘murderer’ leaves on the soul. It is about lengthy legal battles for prisoners’ rights, for which I prepared myself in jails across Britain, often suffering intimidation and harassment from prison officers. I was to learn they could be the masters of this kind of behaviour.

It is about losing a father and a baby daughter I never had the chance to know while locked up inside. It is about missing the best years of my life and so many experiences with the ones I love.

As I write this I am still locked up in a way most of you could not understand. Soon I hope you will.

For, above all, my tale is about a never-ending fight for justice for myself and others: about how to fight the courts when the apparatus of justice turn sour and you find yourself disappearing into a system which won’t hear your screams.

First Arrest

Mr Saunders was attacked on October 12. That night I had gone out to commit a crime, but not that one. I was desperate but not a killer.

All the same, I was entering the first moments of a long nightmare.

I was 20, recently married to my wife, Donna, and the father of a little boy called Kyle.

I was an ordinary guy from a poor but not terrible neighbourhood: Highmead Road in Ely, a deprived part of Cardiff, with some grim council housing and low income or no income families.

My biological father, Alfred Bonello, had never been there for me and abandoned the family early when I was just a young kid. I never really knew who he was. I don’t know exactly why he left and, although I know things were bad between him and my mother, I don’t hold any grudges. I would speak to him if I saw him today but we could never be a father and his son. I was born in September 1967, the second of six children. My brother Tony was four years older than me. Then there was Sue, three years younger, Gina, who came along seven years after me, and twins Kelly and Tina, who were 12 years my junior. We were brought up by my mum Marlene and our Irish-born step-father, Jimmy O’Brien.

I knew my father’s father, Geno Bonello, and used to visit his house in Herbert Street when I was a child. He had a café and bed and breakfast and a friend of his, Nancy Willis, would take me down to see him at weekends. They would both spoil me rotten. His guests would spoil me too and I’d go home with lots of presents and a little bag of money. I loved sitting in the room where my grandfather had this big piano. I used to sit and hit the keys. This was the best part of my childhood. Geno died in 1977.

I was a well-known little character in Ely because everywhere I went I was accompanied by my two dogs, Brandy and Rover. Then there was my legendary ghetto blaster – that came with me everywhere too. On a Sunday morning you could hear me coming up the street listening to Tony Blackburn’s Junior Choice on the radio as I was delivering my papers. A lot of my customers were already on their doorstep waiting for me. I first started doing paper rounds when I was nine to put money in the electric. On Saturdays I used to sell the Football Echo, the sports edition of the evening paper, at the Conservative club, the British Legion and the White Lion pub to earn a little extra cash. I used to go shopping for some of the old people in our street who found it difficult to get out. I was the type of kid who would help anyone.

I came from a poor working class background and knew the hardships which came with it. I can remember wearing shoes too small for me, sometimes with holes in them, getting stick in school for not having the clothes other children’s parents could afford. My mother went without food so we could eat. I know it was hard on her at the time and that she didn’t have any money to take us anywhere, especially with my stepfather Jimmy hitting the bottle. He was a full-on alcoholic and was very violent at times towards my mother and brother. He used to come back from the pub and beat up my mother on a regular basis. It was normal for us to see her with a black eye or with hair ripped out of her head. He was a lovely man when he was sober; a totally different one after a drink. Drunk, he was a shit. I regularly tried to pacify him when he came back from the pub before he tried to start on my mother. He loved music so I used to get the record player out and put on his favourite songs. This used to mellow him and he used to end up singing and leaving my mother alone. He used to try to get us to join in. We grew up listening to Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash and Slim Whitman. As we grew older, when he came home drunk we knew how to handle him and he seemed to mellow out and the beatings stopped. Although the drinking did not.

As I reached my teens my stepfather and I became really close. He’d give me guidance when and where he felt I needed it. I used to confide in him when I had some problems and he was always there for me. I used to plead with him to give up the drinking, as I knew it couldn’t be doing him any good. But this was one thing he would never listen to anyone on. He felt he didn’t have a problem – it was everyone else.

When I was about 15 I changed my name from Bonello to O’Brien. Jimmy was very proud of me and was delighted that his family name was being continued.

We all had a tough childhood just like many other families but we were very close. I will never forget those times. They are very much etched in my memory.

I went to an infants’ school where I was the scrawny kid with the National Health glasses. I was one of those you get at most schools – there to take the piss out of. There were good memories, of a Mrs Harrington, who gave me lots of encouragement in the early years, and of a kind-hearted dinner lady called Val Davies who was always telling me to eat my greens and who always gave me extra food. I think Val was good to us all but for a kid like me it was good to think I was one of her favourites. I got on alright at the nearby St Francis Junior, too. I even had my first crush. Her name was Sally Smith and I used to hang around with her and a friend called Helen Foley. While Sally didn’t feel the same about me we were good friends. When she moved away with her family I was really upset. I gave her a card to say how sorry I was that she was leaving. I cried my eyes out. I haven’t seen her since.

When I was about nine, a new family moved into Highmead Road. I struck up a good friendship with the son. His name was Phillip Walters. I didn’t have many friends at that time. Most of the kids didn’t want to bother with me, basically because we were one of the poorest families in the street. I was nicknamed Smelly Bonelli by other kids and was forever sticking up for my sister Sue who also suffered. Phillip and his family didn’t judge me and took my family and I for the people we were. They used to take me to places like Ogmore-by-sea and Southerndown in their Hillman Avenger. Phillip and I spent a lot of time in an amusement arcade, or playing football and going for rides on our bikes. Our friendship made me feel less different from the rest of the kids.

But when I went to Mostyn High I grew to hate school. I have no good memories of it. I was bullied throughout and it had a terrible effect on me. I didn’t stand a chance of getting a good education because of it and my time there has left many scars. Anybody who has been bullied will know what I feel when I write this. While other people from school are forgotten, I still vividly remember the names of those who bullied me. I’ll never forget the boy who used to stick the pages of my books together with bubble-gum or the boy who battered me over the head with xylophone sticks. Not surprisingly, I left school at the earliest opportunity and without any qualifications. When you are a victim of bullies for long periods of time you don’t stand a chance of doing well. I had no one in the secondary school who I could talk to and the bullies wrecked my childhood. I wouldn’t suffer in silence again and hate the thought of others doing so. My advice to anyone who is being bullied at school is not to do as I did. Report it at once and try to get help. Maybe if I had tried to do something about it I might have done a lot better at school. I don’t blame the schools. If they don’t know about it how can they possibly help you?

The only good thing for me at Mostyn was the girls. I had my first girlfriend there. She was called Charlotte Gerard and she’d just moved in around the corner from me. I had just turned 11 and she was the love of my life! I dreamed about spending my life with her. However, we used to get a lot of stick from other kids because I didn’t have the nice clothes and wasn’t as well groomed as the others (hence, Smelly Bonelli). It got too much in the end and we finished. I was devastated.

Like many kids, I spent a lot of time hanging around the streets trying to be a Casanova. I had a girlfriend called Tina Stewart and we shared some good times together, huddling together in the bus shelter when it was raining or snowing, trying to keep warm in two big oversized coats. We were young and thought we were in love so we spent as much time as we could together. Our relationship fizzled out but we got together again for a short time. It didn’t work out again – we were like a teenage Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor!

There was Teresa Ellis. We used to live and die in each other’s houses and went out with each other on and off for a few years – until I met the girl of my dreams. Her name was Aletha Dickson and she lived at Heath in Cardiff, a few miles from me. I met her when I used to help a friend run his disco at Llanishen High School. She was stunning. She had wet-look hair in the front and long beaded dreadlocks at the back. She was very slim and really stood out from the crowd. We used to spend as much time together as we could. We both shared an interest in a new craze, breakdancing. Some of our friends, Darren, Mark, Vicky, Aletha and I used to go breakdancing whenever we could. Mark used to carry a piece of lino with him so we could practise spinning on our backs and other body popping moves. My ghetto blaster was primed with all the music we needed for dancing. Aletha was a good dancer and used to go to classes where a man called Frankie Johnson used to teach her. He regularly appeared on Top of the Pops and was bloody good. Aletha and I were together for some time but then the arguments started. Her father didn’t want her being with me. He would say she wasn’t in when I called. I took against her father. I made some derogatory remarks in anger (something I regret to this day) and that was the end of our relationship. It finished abruptly.

A few months passed and I met a girl called Donna. It was sometime in 1983 or 1984. We were at Western Leisure Centre in Ely and our eyes met across one of the tables! I liked what I saw but didn’t have the confidence to say anything. But she turned to me and asked me if I had a spare cigarette. I said I didn’t smoke but my friend had given me a fag (which I had placed behind my ear) and I told her she could have it. We soon got talking and I found out that she lived quite near me.

We seemed to get on quite well but she said she had to go home and I didn’t have the confidence to ask for her phone number. She didn’t ask for mine either so we both went our separate ways.

About a week later I was in Cardiff town centre when I bumped into her again. She was with her sister Gaynor. We got talking for a while but she said she had to go to catch her bus home. I started walking in the opposite direction but then I backtracked and went to the bus stop. Donna and her sister were waiting and I plucked up the courage to ask her out for a date. We arranged to meet the next day at a record store in Queen Street. When we met she had her sister in tow. This didn’t bother me. In fact, it helped us both. From that moment on we were inseparable.

Donna, too, was into the breakdancing scene and we’d go out with the same crowd to practise our moves. There were problems with her family