A brain-damaged man jailed for life as a teenager will tell the appeal court today he was pressed by police into making a false murder confession.
Troubled Oliver Campbell, now 53, was interviewed without a lawyer after his arrest for a fatal shooting during an off-licence robbery in 1990.
He was convicted of murder and robbery, while a friend, Eric Samuels, was found guilty of just the robbery.
Campbell’s lawyers claim his trial jury was not told the full extent of his mental health issues, nor did it hear evidence that another man had been named as the gunman.
On the eve of his appeal Campbell, who is free on licence, said: “If I win the choke chain that’s been around my neck for 33 years will come off, but I’m not free yet.
“I’m still a prisoner of the criminal justice system, still under the Home Office because they can recall me to prison any time.”
Image: Baldev Hoondle was shot in the back of the head in his east London shop Pic: Metropolitan Police
He’s a good-natured soul who smiles a lot, is quick to crack jokes and curses his police interrogators in a largely non-offensive manner.
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I asked him why he had confessed to detectives who took him in for questioning. He said: “I was under police pressure, under duress. It was like someone putting you in a room and there’s no way out of it. I felt vulnerable, 100%.”
“If they had done their homework they would have realised I was wrongly arrested, wrongly convicted and wrongly jailed.”
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His legal team say: “Oliver suffered severe brain damage as a baby. His intelligence is borderline defective with an impaired capacity to process or remember more than the simplest verbal information, severely restricted reasoning skills and poor concentration and memory.”
Image: Oliver suffered brain damage as a baby
Part of the evidence against Campbell was his hat, found at the scene, which he admitted was his, but had been taken off him by someone several days before the robbery. The hat contained hairs, but none of them was Campbell’s.
Confession under duress
His lawyers said: “His admissions to police were the main evidence against him. He was said to have made remarks on arrest and en route to the police station showing some knowledge of the murder.
“He arrived at 7.50am and at 8.02am signed the custody record to confirm that he did not want a solicitor or anyone informed of his arrest.
“In a taped interview in the absence of a solicitor or an appropriate adult he first denied involvement but then admitted that he had been the unarmed robber.
“However, the admissions were made in response to a quite misleading suggestion from the interviewing officer that he had dropped the hat in the shop – a suggestion to which he agreed.”
They added: “The detectives were plainly convinced that, since Oliver was the owner of the hat, he must have been the shooter and they were determined to get him to admit that fact.
“They deliberately and falsely exaggerated the strength of the case against him and rang the changes between suggesting that the shooting could only have been deliberate and insinuating that it might have been an accident.”
The gunman was said to be right-handed, while Campbell is left-handed.
Image: The crime scene Pic: Metropolitan Police
Campbell was jailed in December, 1991, for the murder of Baldev Hoondle, who was shot in the back of the head as he struggled with one of two robbers at his off-licence in Hackney, east London.
He was freed on licence in 2002 and continues to live under restrictions that mean he needs permission to get a job and is prevented from travelling abroad.
He said: “Whatever happened in the past, they can’t bring it back. The person who did the crime is still out there and the shopkeeper’s friends and family have not had justice.”
He lost his first appeal, had a second application for appeal turned down by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, but recently persuaded the CCRC he did have a good case, which is being heard this week.
His lawyers said: “We can’t give Oliver back 30 lost years. But hopefully we can persuade the court at long last to recognise the injustice done to him.”
Image: Liverpool’s captain Virgil van Dijk. Pic: Reuters
Image: Liverpool’s Ryan Gravenberch and Cody Gakpo (right) arrive at the funeral of Diogo Jota and Andre Silva. Pic: PA
Jota, 28, leaves behind his wife of only 11 days, Rute Cardoso, and three young children.
His younger brother, 25, was an attacking midfielder for Penafiel in the second tier of Portuguese football.
Liverpool manager Arne Slot, captain Virgil Van Dijk and teammates including Andy Robertson, Conor Bradley, Ryan Gravenberch, Cody Gakpo, Curtis Jones, Darwin Nunez and Joe Gomez were seen at the service.
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Former teammates Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Fabinho were also there.
Van Dijk carried a red wreath with Jota’s number 20, while Robertson had a wreath featuring number 30, Silva’s number at Penafiel.
Image: Manchester United and Portugal player Bruno Fernandes. Pic: PA
Image: Liverpool’s captain Virgil van Dijk and Liverpool’s player Andrew Robertson. Pic: Reuters
Some of Jota’s teammates in the Portuguese national side also attended, including Bruno Fernandes, of Manchester United, Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva, of Manchester City, Joao Felix and Renato Veiga, of Chelsea, Nelson Semedo, from Wolves, Joao Moutinho and Rui Patricio.
Ruben Neves was one of the pallbearers after flying in from Florida where he played for Al Hilal in the Club World Cup quarter-final on Friday night.
‘More than a friend’
In a post published on Instagram before the service, he told Jota he had been “more than a friend, we’re family, and we won’t stop being that way just because you’ve decided to sign a contract a little further away from us!”
Jota’s fellow Liverpool midfielder, Alexis Mac Allister, said on Instagram: “I can’t believe it. I’ll always remember your smiles, your anger, your intelligence, your camaraderie, and everything that made you a person. It hurts so much; we’ll miss you. Rest in peace, dear Diogo.”
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Porto FC president Andre Villas-Boas and Portugal national team manager Roberto Martinez were also in attendance.
‘With us forever’
Speaking after the ceremony, Martinez said the period since their deaths had been “really, really sad days, as you can imagine, but today we showed we are a large, close family.
“Their spirit will be with us forever.”
The service was private, but the words spoken by the Bishop of Porto, Manuel Linda, were broadcast to those standing outside the church.
He told Jota’s children, who were not at the service, that he was praying for them specifically, as well as their mother and grandparents.
“There are no words, but there are feelings,” he said, adding: “We also suffer a lot and we are with you emotionally.”
The brothers died after a Lamborghini they were travelling in burst into flames following a suspected tyre blowout in the early hours of Thursday morning.
No other vehicles are said to have been involved in the incident.
Liverpool have delayed the return of their players for pre-season following Jota’s death and players past and present paid tribute to him and his brother on social media.
Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.
Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.
MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.
Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.
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6:36
Rachel Reeves’s fiscal dilemma
In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.
“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.
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“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.
“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”
Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.
The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.
Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”
In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.
“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”
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“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.
“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”
The family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva have been joined by Liverpool stars past and present and other Portuguese players at the pair’s funeral near Porto.
Pictures below show the funeral at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in the town of Gondomar near Porto. Click here for our liveblog coverage of the day’s events.
Image: Diogo Jota’s wife Rute Cardoso arrives for the funeral of him and his brother Andre Silva. Pic: Reuters
Image: Liverpool players Virgil van Dijk and Andrew Robertson arrive for the funeral. Pic: Reuters
Image: Van Dijk carried a wreath with Jota’s number 20 while Andrew Robertson’s had a 30 for Andre Silva. Pic: Reuters
Image: Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk. Pic: Reuters
Image: Portugal player Ruben Neves arrives at the funeral. Pic: PA
Image: Liverpool’s Joe Gomez and manager Arne Slot arrive at the funeral of Diogo Jota and Andre Silva. Pic; PA
Image: Liverpool’s Ryan Gravenberch and Cody Gakpo (right) arrive at the funeral of Diogo Jota and Andre Silva
Image: Manchester City and Portugal player Bernardo Silva arrives at the funeral. Pic: AP
Image: The coffins are carried to the church. Pic: PA
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2:27
Miguell Rocha played with Jota for around ten years with Gondomar Sport Clube in Portugal.
Image: People line up to enter the church. Pic: AP
Image: Pallbearers carry the coffins of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva
Image: Pic: Reuters
Image: Pic: AP
Image: People gather outside the Chapel of the Resurrection. Pic: Reuters
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The former captain was seen wiping away tears as he read messages and laid his tribute down.
Image: Fans pay their respects outside Anfield in Liverpool. Pic: Reuters
Image: A board with a picture of Diogo Jota outside Anfield Stadium. Pic: PA
Image: The coffins are carried to the church. Pic: PA