Oliver Campbell: Brain-damaged man who was jailed for life over murder has conviction quashed

A brain-damaged man jailed for life for murder as a teenager has had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Oliver Campbell was jailed in 1991 for murdering shopkeeper Baldev Hoondle in Hackney, east London.

He was interviewed without a lawyer after his arrest and later convicted of murder and robbery while a friend, Eric Samuels, was found guilty of just the robbery.

Three judges ruled on Wednesday that Mr Campbell’s conviction was “unsafe”.

Mr Campbell’s lawyers claimed his trial jury was not told the full extent of his mental health issues, nor did it hear evidence another man had been named as the gunman.

On the eve of his appeal in February this year Mr Campbell, who is free on licence, told Sky News: “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.”

Asked 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.”

His legal team said: “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.”

Part of the evidence against Campbell was his hat, which was found at the scene and 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 belonged to Mr Campbell.

The gunman was also said to be right-handed, while Mr Campbell is left-handed.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) previously referred Mr Campbell’s case to the Court of Appeal, arguing his conviction should be quashed.

He had lost his first appeal, had a second application for appeal turned down by the CCRC but then persuaded it he did have a good case.

Mr Campbell was freed on licence in 2002 and has been living under restrictions meaning he needs permission to get a job and is prevented from travelling abroad.

Read more from Sky News:
Taylor swift posts statement endorsing Kamala Harris
Dave Grohl reveals he’s become father ‘outside of my marriage’

Lord Justice Holroyde, sitting with Mr Justice Bourne and Mrs Justice Stacey, said the rulings might be different “in the light of fresh evidence”.

“A jury knowing of the fresh evidence would be considering the reliability of those confessions in a materially different context,” Lord Justice Holroyde added.

“In those circumstances, we cannot say that the fresh evidence could not reasonably have affected the decision of the jury to convict.”

The Metropolitan Police issued a statement responding to the ruling: “The murder of Baldev Singh Hoondle in July 1990 was fully investigated by detectives at the time with a range of evidence brought before a jury who convicted the defendant the following year.

“We are aware of today’s decision by the Court of Appeal in relation to Mr Campbell’s conviction. We await the full Judgement and will review these findings. We will continue to provide support to Mr Hoondle’s family.”