Miscarriage of justice victim Sam Hallam loses bid for compensation

Sam Hallam and his mother Wendy

A Hoxton man who spent seven years in prison for a crime he did not commit has lost his fight for compensation.

Sam Hallam was jailed in 2005 aged 17 for life with a minimum term of 12 years in connection with the murder of Essayas Kassahun in 2004. In May 2012, appeal judges decided the conviction was unsafe.

Criticising the High Court ruling, Paul May, chair of the Sam Hallam campaign said: “This is a sad day for justice and the presumption of innocence.

“We hope the Court of Appeal will overturn this judgement. Sam Hallam’s wrongful conviction was examined in meticulous detail by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) in a three year inquiry, and Thames Valley Police in a fifteen month investigation.

“Not a shred of evidence was uncovered to place him at the murder scene, while no less than 37 witnesses were identified at the scene, none of whom saw Sam Hallam. The callous refusal of the Ministry of Justice to compensate this innocent man is truly shameful.’

“The High Court said new evidence which freed Sam Hallam ‘did not establish that he could not have been at the scene of the crime’.

“This would have required him to run almost two miles from the Hoxton pub he was in shortly before the killing, quickly carry out the murder and then run all the way back while evading numerous CCTV cameras and disposing of an alleged nail-encrusted bat which was never found.

“None of 37 witnesses interviewed by Thames Valley Police saw Sam at the scene. The sole prosecution witness whose contradictory evidence convicted Sam admitted she’d been looking for ‘someone to blame’.

“She refused repeated requests from the Criminal Cases Review Commission and Thames Valley Police to be interviewed. Based on the court’s logic, could any of the judges prove conclusively that they ‘could not have been present at the scene of the crime’ themselves?'”

Meanwhile Sam Hallam’s girlfriend Renee said: “There has to be some recognition of what happened. Everyone just shrugged their shoulders and said, “Well, you’re out now. You should just be happy.”

The legal challenge was seen as a test case for a new regime to compensate the victims of miscarriages introduced by the Coaltion government last year.

It changed eligibility for compensation which means that it will only pay out when the new facts resulting in the quashing of a conviction shows “beyond reasonable doubt” the person did not commit the offence.

The previous Labour government cut compensation paid out to the victims of miscarriages of justice. In 2007, the former Home Secretary Charles Clarke scrapped an ex gratia scheme.