ILL BRAINLIST YOU !! What are 3 crimes Michael O'Brien has and what I mean as in crimes is what is his roles as part of his job

Thirty years ago today Michael O’Brien, Ellis Sherwood and Darren Hall were wrongfully convicted of the brutal murder of Cardiff Newsagent, Phillip Saunders. They ultimately served 11 years and 43 days before their convictions were quashed in 1999. Three decades might have passed but the pain caused by that shocking miscarriage of justice remains undiminished.

At 19 years of age, Michael O’Brien had a steady job, a wife and a child with another on the way. A self-described ‘petty criminal’, he was out one night in a stolen car. ‘Most of my friends were on the dole, smoking ganja and stealing cars. To fit in, sometimes you have to do things you don’t wanna do. That cost me dearly.’

That night, Phillip Saunders was murdered. O’Brien, Sherwood and Hall were brought in as part of the investigation. They would be charged with murder and put on remand. ‘It wasn’t just dealing with being wrongly accused; but I had to deal with the fact that my wife was heavily pregnant and I wasn’t gonna be there at the birth.’

His wife gave birth to a baby girl but things were to take a tragic turn. ‘Just before trial, my daughter died of cot death. I was just devastated and I was in no fit state to go to trial. My mental health deteriorated really badly. My wife walked out on me.’

Some officers taunted O’Brien: ‘I was sexually assaulted when I was 17, they were the same officers who investigated that and they were telling me that I would get bent over and shagged in prison. Really horrible stuff.’

‘Before this I trusted the police,’ he continued. ‘I thought that this would be sorted out at trial. I never thought I would get found guilty.’

‘Free the Cardiff Newsagent 3’

The outlook was bleak for his trial too. One of his co-accused, Darren Hall, had confessed to being involved, and implicated the other two. A South Wales police officer, Stuart Lewis, also claimed he overheard a conversation between two of three defendants admitting their parts in the murder.

I asked O’Brien about the moment the foreman of the jury came back with a guilty verdict. ‘I was absolutely numb. I started to cry and was holding onto the rail. I turned to my father and said: ‘As long as you know I didn’t do it, that’s all that matters’.’

Experts testified at the Court of Appeal years later that Hall’s confession was unreliable as it was influenced by a combination of a previously undiagnosed personality disorder and police pressure. It would be reported that the police had breached PACE (the Police and Criminal Evidence Act) some 115 times in their questioning of the suspects.

The three men were handcuffed to hot radiators, denied food, water and access to lawyers.

O’Brien always maintained that the cell ‘confession’ was fabricated by detective inspector Lewis. The Court of Appeal held that, in light of questionable note-taking in a previous case and the misconduct during interviews, his account was suspicious and was liable for a second cross-examination.

And two witnesses claimed they lied in giving evidence against the three defendants as a direct result of police pressure.

O’Brien was suffering from the trauma years before that evidence was put back to court. ‘I used to feel suicidal. I still do now, even though I’m a free man. But what I didn’t know at the time was I was suffering from PTSD.’ He often believed it was all a nightmare. ‘When I realised it wasn’t, it really freaked me out. I jumped off the bed, I was so irate. I was so tense. It was such an awful feeling in my stomach, knowing that I was doing a life sentence for somebody else’s crime. What can be worse than that?’

O’Brien felt he was being punished for maintaining his innocence. He challenged attempts by prison authorities to ban him speaking to journalists. As a result of the interest of a BBC programme (the case featured in Week In, Week Out) the miscarriage of justice watchdog, the Criminal Cases Review Commission reinvestigated the men’s case. ‘If I hadn’t have taken them to court, the BBC programme wouldn’t have been made and we wouldn’t have had our names cleared,’ O’Brien recalled. ‘They told me at one stage that if I continued protesting my innocence then I would die in prison. I said: ‘So be it.’ I was either leaving there in a box or as an innocent man.’

Bail was granted for the ‘Cardiff Newsagent Three’ when the evidence they found was put to Court.  ‘I was on top of the world. For the first time in 11 and a half years I was to spend Christmas with my family and kid. I can remember it as clear as day. I stayed up with my son all night. He was 13 at the time and came and gave me a cwtch (hug) on my bed and we fell asleep together.’

THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL

Macken, J. [No. CCA 200/08]

Bermingham, J.

O’Keeffe, J.

Between/

THE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONSRespondent-and-

MICHAEL O’BRIEN

Applicant

Judgment of the Court delivered on the 28th day of October, 2010 by Macken, J.

This is an application for leave to appeal against conviction, brought on behalf of the applicant, who was convicted at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on the 6th November, 2007, in respect of several charges of sexual assault against two young girls, who were sisters. The applicant was sentenced to lengthy periods in respect of the offences. There is also an appeal against sentence, but that application has been adjourned, in the usual way, pending the outcome of this application.

Notice of application for leave to appeal was filed on the 8th October, 2008, and included several grounds of appeal. Very helpful written submissions were filed on behalf of both parties prior to the oral hearing. Some of the grounds in the written grounds of appeal originally filed on behalf of the applicant were already notified to this Court as not being relied on, which was of considerable assistance to the Court. Of the extant grounds, several arise out of the same provisions of law, namely, those in the Criminal Justice Act 2006 (“the Act of 2006”), and can be described, in general, in the following terms:

(1) [Grounds 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8]

The learned trial judge erred in fact and in law, or on a mixed question of fact and law, in his interpretation and application of the provisions of s.16 of the Act of 2006, in particular, on the issue of the reliability of the statement in question and on whether it was voluntarily made.

(2) [Ground 12]

The learned trial judge erred in fact and in law, or on a mixed question of fact and law, in failing to warn the jury, whether adequately or at all, of the danger of convicting the applicant on the evidence of the complainants, in the absence of corroboration of the events.

Background Facts

To understand the context in which the extant grounds of appeal arise, it is necessary to say something about the background to the issues arising at the trial and as to the manner in which the complaints came to light and were noted and assessed. The appellant had been charged with several counts of sexual assault occurring over a number of years in respect of his two daughters. The two children were M, who was aged nine at the time of the trial, and K, aged eight at the time of the trial, and the events took place on several dates up to the time when the first child was about six and the other child about five, when the claims came to light. Both complainants made statements in respect of the alleged assaults.

During the course of the trial K, the younger of the two girls, gave evidence in broad terms in accordance with her previous statement of intended evidence in the Book of Evidence. However, M, the older girl, gave evidence which, after argument, was deemed by the learned trial judge to be “materially inconsistent” with pre-trial statements made by her. The prosecution thereupon sought permission to introduce a pre-trial statement which existed, pursuant to the provisions of s.16 of the Act of 2006, a recently introduced provision which provides for this to occur in certain circumstances. This statement consisted of, or certainly included, video recorded interviews which had been conducted between M, the complainant, and a psychologist, Dr. O’Sullivan, shortly after the complaints had been made by the children’s mother to An Garda Sochna. These video recorded interviews had already been made available to the defence prior to the trial. The material also included a short memo of an interview with the complainant taken or noted by Garda Larraine Fahey. The introduction of the video material was objected to by counsel on behalf of the applicant.

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