An open letter to all in authority from Bruce Kent. (Former chairman of The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and British cleric). A man with a solid reputation for caring.

“Lose no sleep over Gilbert”

With those few words a Trial and Error TV programme, broadcast on 5 January 1999, dismissed the possibility that Raymond Gilbert, convicted of murder in 1981, might not have been properly convicted.

The programme was aimed at obtaining justice for John Kamara, Gilbert's co- defendant, who was also convicted for the same murder. In that respect the programme was successful. The Court of Appeal later in 2000 quashed the verdict on Kamara, who had already spent 19 years in prison.

But we were told to 'lose no sleep' over Gilbert. Sleep or not, I nevertheless have grave and uncomfortable doubts. It does not seem to me that Gilbert was convicted beyond reasonable doubt.

Born of a white mother and a black father, certainly an unloved child, Gilbert, afllicted with a speech impediment, had a patchy education and drifted into the underworld of Liverpool crime. He already had a record for robbery and for one assault before the accusation of murder. He was therefore an obvious suspect when a local betting shop manager was murdered in the course of a robbery which went dreadfully wrong.

But suspicion is not enough. What of evidence? Against neither Gilbert nor Kamara was there any positive evidence to connect them directly with the crime. The only evidence was actually against Kamara, now declared innocent. He, and not Gilbert, was picked out on an identification parade as the man one witness saw struggling with a white man outside the betting shop at about the time of the murder. The parade itself was not run according to proper rules. The witness had failed to pick out Gilbert on the first parade. The second parade was made up of a number of the same people with Kamara introduced as one of the new people. So the chances therefore of picking out Kamara were rather higher than they would otherwise have been if all those on the parade had been new to the witness.

However that no longer matters. The Court of Appeal has given its ruling about Kamara's innocence, and it did so in part because a large number of witness statements were not given to the defence at the time of the trial. Some of them even contradicted the witness evidence that was used. One unused witness said that he saw a van draw up at the betting shop, out of which four men emerged with something like a pickaxe handle, and burst their way into the betting shop. It was even revealed that one man had had a fierce altercation about an unpaid bet on the day before the murder, which took place on 13 March 1981, and had threatened that he would return to sort out the manager the next day if he was not properly paid.

The Court of Appeal must also have dismissed the prosecution evidence provided by fellow prisoners on remand about alleged admissions of guilt by Gilbert and Kamara. One of those prisoners later repudiated his statement. Another, who reported a conversation in which Kamara was supposed to have admitted being involved, hated Kamara because he thought that Kamara had raped his wife.

What then of Gilbert? The murder took place at about 9.30 am on Friday 13 March 1981. Gilbert was detained on Monday 16 March and then spent two days and nights in police custody. In detaining Gilbert the police could then only have been acting on general suspicion. No fingerprint, footprint, forensic, bloodstain or witness evidence has ever connected Gilbert with the crime. At one stage there was the suggestion that a knife of the right size was found at a house visited by Gilbert, but that connection was not pressed when it was admitted that the knife was one which could easily be found in many Liverpool kitchens.

Did Gilbert have an alibi? Well he had one. He returned to the flat of his girlfriend, after drinking with friends, at 2 am on the morning of the murder. Apart from a possible visit to the newsagent/tobacconists, he was with her all day. At least she stuck to that story for some time, but after interrogation she was actually charged on 18 March, with impeding the prosecution of Gilbert, and remanded in custody. She then changed her story and said that Gilbert had gone out on the morning of the murder. Gilbert's alibi then became a prosecution witness, having clearly been intimidated.

But what was the case against Gilbert, who had repudiated his confession and pleaded Not Guilty when it came to court? Simply that after two days and nights of police interrogation, with little sleep and no legal representative present, he had confessed to murder and signed a detailed statement. Worse, he involved an associate of his, Johnny Kamara, and said that Kamara had been with him. Why? Who knows. He says he was shown a photofit picture and asked to identify the people in it. Whether Kamara's name was suggested to him we do not know. The interviews were not taped. Whatever the circumstances, Gilbert certainly carries a heavy responsibility for Kamara's arrest and subsequent 19 years in prison.

What of the confession? It is said that it revealed details of the murder that only someone who had been at the scene of the crime could have known. This is nonsense. He was in the custody of two policemen who would have been negligent if they had not known all the details of the crime. Did they, convinced they were dealing with a murderer, reveal details to Gilbert which he could not have known anyway from reading the Liverpool papers? That is at least possible.

Curiously, Gilbert's first verbal admission which was noted by the police, and his subsequent written confession, differ in significant ways. In the first place he said he threw the knife down a drain after leaving the betting shop. In the written confession, which he signed, he said he took it to a friend's house, where indeed a possible knife was found. Then in his first admission he said that the betting shop door was open and that the two of them just went in. In the signed statement he said they had to grab the manager, poke him with a knife, and make him open the door. It is just possible that these changes were suggested to him because they fitted certain statements made by witnesses.

In any event, since the Court of Appeal has decided that Gilbert's confession, insofar as it involved Kamara, was untrue, why should it be assumed that the rest of the confession is unquestionably true?

But why was a confession of any sort made if he knew he was innocent? On that issue the distinguished consultant psychologist, Olive Tunstall, having examined Gilbert in preparation for his appeal process, prepared a detailed report on his makeup and background, dated April 1999. She says: “In my opinion there is evidence to suggest that the confession Mr Gilbert made during the police interviews may have been unreliable. I have based that opinion on the following grounds.” The first of these is as follows: “Mr Gilbert's personal vulnerability at that time (youth, limited education, abnormal personality, stammer, adverse social circumstances and in my opinion a profound fear of being physically assaulted emanating from early childhood experiences), his lack of access of legal advice and evidence that at the time he began his confession he was in a state of high anxiety.” Olive Tunstall's detailed 29-page report confirms that there are serious doubts about Gilbert's conviction.

There is another point which is significant. While the judge was summing up in the Kamara case, some of the jurors asked him why, in the police photograph of the murder scene, a full bottle of milk and what looks like a newspaper are clearly evident on a dresser. The jurors rightly wanted to know how they got there. They were not delivered. They must have been carried into the shop by somebody, but certainly not by the manager if he was, according to Gilbert's confession, struggling vigorously against two robbers. It is just possible that someone else had entered the shop, perhaps someone connected with the previous day's threat, and was lying in wait for the manager, who himself brought in the milk and the paper. However, thanks to Gilbert's confession and the witness evidence of identification against Kamara, it seems not to have occurred to the judge that the murder could have been committed by somebody else. All he could say in reply to the question from the jurors was "It is so difficult to understand why it matters."

Not that it did much matter for Gilbert. Some days after the trial eventually began - two juries were discharged - Gilbert got up and changed his plea to guilty. His words were: "This has been going on long enough, so I want to change from Not Guilty to Guilty." At that point the judge stopped him from going further. It is at least possible that he was going on to say that Karnara had not been with him.

Why would he make that admission granted the lack of evidence against him, and did he realise that in so doing he was probably shutting prison doors on himself for a long time? Whether he got good advice at that moment from his counsel we do not know. It is reported that Counsel now says that he cannot remember the case.

Gilbert's explanation for the change of plea was that he was threatened in prison that he would be 'done' if he did not get Kamara off. He was certainly in prison with some very tough and unscrupulous people, quite capable of making and putting such threats into action. He may also have thought he was doomed anyway after his written confession and wanted to get the whole business over with.

Gilbert has now spent twenty years in prison. His efforts to get Kamara off at the trial, if such they were, did not succeed, though he did try again in prison in 1982 by suggesting that someone else, not Kamara, had been his partner. Once he moved to another prison, away from those allegedly intimidating him, he again claimed that he was innocent and has maintained that position ever since.

He has not been a model prisoner in Home Office terms and has been convicted of an assault while in prison. This verdict is being challenged. On the other hand, while in Durham, he voluntarily undertook three sponsored runs around the prison yard to raise funds for young people needing medical care. In total he raised over £1400. These runs took a great deal of training and commitment.

For the last 19 years since 1982 he has maintained his innocence. If he had taken the parole road, admitted guilt, and behaved himself, he would certainly be out of prison now. He is a determined man and if he has to admit his guilt before he is released, then he will spend the rest of his life in prison. Today his case would never have gone to trial. A confession from a young man of mixed race with a speech impediment, obtained as Gilbert's was obtained, however honest the policemen involved, would be rejected as evidence.

However, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, in March 2000, denied Gilbert access to the Court of Appeal. When the Commissioners made that decision they could not have known that Kamara's separate appeal would be upheld in May 2000. This decision by the Court of Appeal undermines the credibility of Gilbert's entire confession. In their March 2000 ruling the Commissioners discounted the evidence of Ms Tunstall, who is a very experienced psychologist, and accepted the police version of the interrogation and confession without serious question.

A new appeal has now been made to the CCRC on the basis of European human rights law. Gilbert's solicitors have however been told that this request must take its place in the queue. Even if they allow eventually access to the Court of Appeal, it could be years rather than months before the case is heard.

"Lose no sleep over Gilbert." I have visited him five or six times in the last two years and have tried to keep up with the extensive correspondence about his innocence which he conducts from prison. I do not lose sleep, but I do have a strong conviction that his guilt has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt. It is that which is required before a jury can bring in a "guilty" verdict. Will someone in authority please look at this case again?

Bruce Kent
June 2001

 

 

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