Oliver Campbell's barrister says he may never receive compensation

Oliver Campbell’s only shot at state compensation will be if hairs retrieved from the crime scene are subjected to modern DNA testing and implicate another suspect, said Glyn Maddocks KC.

Otherwise, he may have to file a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Police Service.

Mr Maddocks said he was “absolutely thrilled to bits” that Mr Campbell had finally seen his conviction quashed.

Mr Campbell, previously from Stratford, was convicted in 1991 of shooting dead shopkeeper Baldev Hoondle in a botched robbery in Lower Clapton Road.

No forensic evidence ever linked him to the crime and he did not match witnesses’ descriptions of the shooter.

But Mr Campbell, who suffered severe brain damage as a baby and has a mental age of seven, became a suspect because his baseball cap was found near the crime scene.

He confessed after being subjected to 11 police interrogations in two days, some without a lawyer.

Oliver Campbell's lawyers Michael Birnbaum KC (left) and Glyn Maddocks (right) have been fighting to overturn his conviction for 15 years (Image: Charles Thomson)

After more than 30 years of campaigning, his conviction was overturned today (September 11) on grounds that new scientific evidence showed there was a high risk of Mr Campbell falsely confessing.

But Court of Appeal judges did not make a positive finding that Mr Campbell was innocent.

“He wouldn’t be eligible for compensation because in 2014, the government stopped compensation for anyone who couldn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they didn’t do it,” said Mr Maddocks.

“What he may be able to do is launch a civil claim against the Metropolitan Police.”

Mr Campbell’s three-day appeal hearing earlier this year heard how police and prosecutors continued to seek his conviction long after being told he was innocent.

Eric Samuels, who admitted being one of the two robbers who targeted Mr Hoondle’s shop on July 22, 1990, told police his accomplice was not Mr Campbell but another man called Harvey.

He said he and Harvey had stolen Mr Campbell’s hat earlier in the day, then gone to Cambridge Heath in search of a supermarket to rob.

The judge at Mr Campbell’s trial banned any mention of Samuels’s comments, on grounds that they were “hearsay”.

Appeal court judges accepted that the statements might be admissible under modern standards but said they would “carry very little weight”, so did not allow them as a ground of appeal.

Oliver Campbell outside the Royal Courts of Justice with Michael Birnbaum KC and Glyn Maddocks KC in February 2024 (Image: Charles Thomson)

Meanwhile, brain-damaged Mr Campbell had confessed after what expert witness Professor Gisli Gudjonsson testified were the most oppressive police interviews he had witnessed in 40 years.

Michael Birnbaum KC told appeal judges that the police’s “misleading, bullying and unfair” behaviour – which included ridiculing Mr Campbell and lying to him, claiming they had lots of forensic evidence of his guilt – would be deemed misconduct by modern standards.

But appeal judges said these criticisms were “no more than an attempt to re-run the trial” of 1991 and did not permit that as a ground of appeal either.

They quashed Mr Campbell’s conviction only on the “narrow” ground of new scientific evidence about his mental impairment and the reliability of his confessions.

Mr Maddocks said hairs found in the baseball cap had been tested around 20 years ago and found not to belong to Mr Campbell – but modern re-testing could be the key to solving the crime and unlocking compensation.

“Things have moved on quite considerably since then,” he said.

“Someone may be able to get the hairs and have them tested and if that turns out to be someone who can be identified, who may be on the database – perhaps this Harvey – then that will be a bombshell.

“Then he would be entitled to compensation and it would make a farce of the judgment you have just read.”

The Met Police said Mr Hoondle’s murder was “fully investigated” and a jury convicted Mr Campbell based on “a wide range of evidence”.

It said it would “review” the Court of Appeal’s judgment, but did not respond to our question about whether it would order re-testing of the hairs from the baseball cap.