Prosecutors put a brain-damaged man on trial for murder and robbery offences based on a confessions in which almost every detail he gave was incorrect, his lawyer has claimed.
Oliver Campbell was wrong about when the crime occurred, what colour gun was used and what happened inside the off-licence he was accused of robbing.
He also did not match the description of the killer, barrister Michael Birnbaum KC told the Court of Appeal on Wednesday (February 28) – a fact most powerfully confirmed by the victim’s own son, who saw the shooter.
But he said his mentally-impaired client was subjected to a series of “disgraceful” police interviews in which he was “bullied” into confessing.
Mr Campbell, now 53, was convicted in 1991 of the 1990 shooting of Hackney shopkeeper Baldev Hoondle.
Mr Hoondle was shot during a robbery at the G and H Supermarket in Lower Clapton Road, Hackney.
In a statement read to the court, his son Hardip told police that two black men had entered the shop, one of whom “stood by the counter for a good ten seconds, looking in my direction without saying a word”.
Sensing trouble, he pressed the panic alarm under the counter, triggering a flashing light and loud siren.
The man who had stared at him started struggling with his father, “holding something silver in his hand near my father’s head and neck,” said Mr Hoondle’s son.
“Nothing was said between the two. There were no threats and all I heard was a bang.
“My father fell to the ground… I ran from behind the counter to where my father was laying. I noticed he was bleeding from the neck.”
Mr Birnbaum displayed an artist’s impression Mr Hoondle’s son had helped create, so detailed and accurate that he even placed the right words in the right places on the shooter’s baseball cap.
“I can say definitely that I think I will recognise this man again,” he wrote in his statement.
Yet at a later identification procedure, he did not recognise Mr Campbell.
Moreover, said Mr Birnbaum, Mr Hoondle was said to be 5ft 9ins tall, while Mr Campbell is 6ft 3in.
“The son would surely have seen that - would have seen a man towering over his father,” he told the court.
But Mr Hoondle’s son had agreed with other witnesses that robbers were around 5ft 10ins tall.
Mr Hoondle was shot in the left side of his head at point blank range by a man facing him, Mr Birnbaum added - meaning the gun had to have been in the shooter’s right hand.
But Mr Campbell is left-handed, having suffered brain damage as a baby that left him with limited use of his right hand.
He was only linked to the crime months later, after significant publicity and a Crimewatch appeal, because he had owned a distinctive baseball cap worn by the shooter.
But another man, Eric Samuels, who admitted being one of the two robbers, told police Mr Campbell was not his accomplice.
He said his accomplice had stolen Mr Campbell’s hat earlier in the day, before the shooting.
When it was found near the scene, hairs inside it did not match those of Mr Campbell.
But police subjected their brain-damaged suspect to what Mr Birnbaum called “a disgraceful series of interviews of a kind that no police officer today would dream of conducting".
He said police interrogated Mr Campbell without a lawyer or appropriate adult and repeatedly had “off record” conversations with him that were not properly documented.
They wrongly claimed they had “lots of witnesses” against Mr Campbell and fingerprints placing him at the scene.
After a solicitor arrived, Mr Birnbaum said police waited until he left again and then resumed questioning Mr Campbell without a lawyer.
At this time, a police officer claimed Mr Campbell told him, on his way to the cells: “Something inside me is wanting to tell the truth. It’s like a door opening inside me. I don’t want to lie. I shot the Asian man.”
Mr Birnbaum poured scorn on the allegation, telling the court: “Having heard his stumbling and semi-coherent words on the tape, could he really have said anything as eloquent as this?”
Transcripts and recordings showed Mr Campbell did not know what day of the week the robbery occurred on, incorrectly estimated the time of the robbery and described the gun as “dark black”, whereas Mr Hoondle’s son said it was silver.
He also repeatedly incorporated suggestions from police officers into his confessions.
Mr Birnbaum called the confessions “a tissue of nonsense”.
“Since Oliver hadn’t been there, all he could do was make things up,” he said.
“His account became increasingly divorced from the facts as we know them, increasingly inconsistent and increasingly absurd.”
His case has been referred to the Court of Appeal on grounds that experts believe it is likely his mental impairment led to false confessions.
But the Government is contesting the appeal and indicated that it will challenge the admissibility of new scientific and medical evidence.
“Oliver had plainly, by then, decided that his least bad option was to admit that it had all been an accident,” said Mr Birnbaum.
“Our suggestion is that he thought he could get away with doing that – that the police would accept that and then he could go.
“But unfortunately for him, and perhaps unfortunately for justice, [police] couldn’t leave it at that.”
The appeal continues.
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