Wrongly jailed man in call for legal changes
A MAN who spent 25 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit has made fresh calls for sweeping changes to the criminal justice system which wrongly locked him up.
Robert Brown was convicted in 1977 for the murder of Annie Walsh after he was beaten into confessing to the unsolved crime.
On the 15th anniversary of his release in November of 2002, he has warned that there has been no reform to the system that locked him up.
The 60-year-old said: “I don’t feel anything – I’m dead inside.”
“How I feel doesn’t matter. Pain is all I know. I live with it every day and I have to deal with it in my own way every day.”
Robert is a victim of one of Britain’s worst miscarriages of justice, having spent 25 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.
“I don’t do this because I want self-pity,” he said.
“I want changes to the criminal justice system that shows there’s balance and equality for everybody.
“We need deep, radical change or you’re going to hear cases like this for the next 25 years.
“It concerns me people are still getting convicted on hearsay evidence, character assassination and more – you would think a criminal justice system would have to be evidence based.
“I was convicted on the word of the police and juries believe police.
“Since I was released in 2002, there has not been any improvement in the justice system. I think police should be held responsible for their crimes.
Robert grew up in a tenement in Kilbowie, Dunbartonshire, until the age of nine when he went into care in Quarriers, Inverclyde, until he was 15.
Four years later, he started a quarter century stretch in prison.
Annie Walsh, 51, was murdered in Manchester in 1977.
After months of the case sitting unsolved, Robert was picked up and he was beaten for two days until he confessed.
Most of the officers allegedly involved are now dead so Robert will never see them brought to justice. It took less than an hour for the Court of Appeal to realise Robert’s conviction was unsafe -10 years after the Home Office refused and nearly 20 after the investigation of police.
He lived in the Knightswood area of Glasgow for a time after his release but later moved away from the area.
Though Robert was given compensation, the justice system then demanded more than £100,000 to pay for his prison living expenses.