18 mrt. 2021
Wrongly convicted for the murder of Annie Walsh, Robert Brown was the longest serving miscarriage of justice case in UK history. We follow Robert as he tries to pick up the pieces of his life in the first year after his release from prison.
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What is ROBERT BROWN CASE? What does ROBERT BROWN CASE mean? ROBERT BROWN CASE meaning – ROBERT BROWN CASE definition – ROBERT BROWN CASE explanation.
Source: Wikipedia.org article, adapted under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/… license.
Robert Brown is a Scottish man who spent 25 years in jail for a crime he did not commit. In January 1977, Annie Walsh was beaten to death in her home in Manchester, England and Brown was first interrogated and beaten by the police officers investigating this crime. Under duress, Brown signed a confession and was found guilty at trial. He maintained his innocence throughout his prison sentence even going so far as denying himself parole by not admitting to the crime. He was released on appeal in 2002 and is thought to be one of the longest serving victims of a miscarriage of justice in the United Kingdom.
Brown grew up in Kilbowie in Dumbartonshire and was placed into care when he was nine years old by his mother after he witnessed his dad beating her up. At the age of 15 he took himself out of care and returned home where he and his father “came to blows”. His dad threw him out soon afterwards. Brown admits that he partook in a life of petty crime. He later moved to Manchester to make “a fresh start” after going to a football match in the city. Whilst in Manchester he met a girl, Cathy Shaw, who later became his girlfriend.
On 31 January 1977, factory worker Annie Walsh, who was 51 at the time, was found battered to death in her flat in Charles Berry Crescent, Hulme, Greater Manchester by a man who had come to read the electricity meter. She had been hit over the head sixteen times and her blood was splattered over the furniture, walls and ceiling. A Home Office pathologist estimated that she had lain undiscovered for two to three days after the murder, (she was last seen alive on 28 January 1977). Police were so concerned about the frenzied nature of the attack that they consulted mental units in case someone had escaped.
In May 1977, the police went to the flat that Brown shared with his girlfriend Cathy; it was in the same block of flats where Annie Walsh had lived and been murdered. He was originally arrested for non-payment of a fine and was taken in for questioning without his rights being read to him and held for 32 hours without legal representation. At the trial, Brown stated that the confession was beaten and coerced out of him and when he did ask for a lawyer, he was told by the policemen that “only guilty men need a lawyer”.
The trial was presided over by Judge Helenus Milmo who directed the jury’s attention to the fact that it came down to whether or not they believed the police, or whether they believed Brown was innocent. The jury convicted Brown of murder and Judge Milmo sentenced him to life with a minimum term of 15 years.
Brown appealed the sentencing in 1978, but the appeal was turned down. An appeal was lodged again with then Home Secretary, Michael Howard in 1993, but this was also denied in the following year.
Whilst in prison, Brown was caught in what Simon Hattenstone, writing in The Guardian, describes as “the Miscarriage of Justice Catch-22” (the Innocent prisoner’s dilemma); because he would not admit his guilt in the crime for which he was imprisoned, he could not be rehabilitated and be deemed fit to be put in front of a parole board. Brown refused the chance of parole from a point of view that investigative journalist Eamonn O’Neill called a point of logic; “how could he be paroled for a crime that he did not commit?”.
Whilst in prison, Brown shared a cell with Paul Hill, one of the Guildford Four, who, after having his conviction quashed and then released, later campaigned against Brown’s miscarriage of justice. The case was again referred to the Court of Appeal in 2002 by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).
An appeal court in November 2002 decided that Brown should be allowed to go free after declaring his conviction unsafe. The appeal was due to be heard over two days, but the judges at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, quashed the conviction within minutes when the Counsel for the Crown explained that he could not argue the case on the evidence presented before the court; the appeal lasted only 18 minutes before it was deemed an ‘unsafe conviction’…..
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