VICTOR NEALON

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THE GUARDIAN DECEMBER FRIDAY 13 2013

A man who spent 17 years behind bars after being wrongly convicted of a sexual assault has been freed by the court of appeal after DNA evidence pointed to another man as the perpetrator.

Victor Nealon, a former postman, has always maintained his innocence. He was convicted in January 1997 of the attempted rape of a woman leaving a nightclub.

Three appeal court judges quashed the conviction after a hearing lasting around an hour at the Royal Courts of Justice. Lord Justice Fulford said the court would set out its full judgment at a later date.

Peter Willcock QC, for Nealon, argued that had the DNA evidence been provided at the original trial it would have been "explosive".

The crown said it would not seek to appeal against the ruling.

Nealon, 53, was appearing via videolink from Wakefield prison, and spoke only to say: "Thank you. Thank you very much." He had been serving a discretionary life sentence but was not considered for parole because he consistently denied the offence.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred his case - which since 2010 has been highlighted by the Guardian in its Justice on Trial series - to the court of appeal earlier this year. It accepted Nealon's legal team's argument that DNA traces on the 22-year-old victim's blouse and underwear belonging to another unknown male made the conviction unsafe.

Nealon had twice before appealed to the CCRC, but the CCRC had resisted calls to conduct DNA tests on evidence. The solicitor Mark Newby, of Jordan's Solicitors in Doncaster, who took up the case in 2008, commissioned independent experts and proved that the samples, from an unidentified male, could not have been Nealon's.

The crown argued that the DNA evidence was neutral, as samples could have been from other sources, such as the shops where the victim bought the clothes. But lawyers for Nealon said the position of the DNA samples was consistent with the description of the assault, and on more than one item of clothing. Willcock told the court that the fact Nealon had always requested testing of the clothes for DNA evidence, which could have identified him had he been the attacker, underlined his innocence.

The CCRC carried out extensive checks to match the DNA profile found on the victim's clothing to people who had handled the evidence or knew the victim, but found no match.

Leo O'Toole, a friend of Nealon's who has campaigned for his release, said it was a great day, but it had taken too many years to secure justice. "The overturning of this conviction shows how difficult it can be to right a wrong. The damage to Victor – and to the victim – is irreversible. She will also now know that the real perpetrator got away free."

He added: "Victor has been emotionally and physically traumatised and is effectively homeless." He said that Nealon had been assaulted in the notoriously tough Wakefield prison even within the last few weeks.

Newby said: "It's a serious miscarriage of justice, and it's been hard fought. But it also demonstrates the importance of appeal lawyers being able to access evidence from old cases, as there clearly could be other wrongful convictions out there in cases when exhibits are withheld."

He said they would be deciding whether to seek compensation for Nealon's years in prison in the new year.

While the thrust of the appeal was the fresh DNA evidence, the court also heard there were concerns about witness identification of Nealon, as statements said he had distinctive facial features including a lump on his forehead that did not match Nealon's. By Gwyn Topham

WHOOPS - This is the document that Cramp & Co did not know about when defending a case between 2006 and 2008 - but would have discovered if they had challenged the medical evidence as instructed by their client. This could have led to an adjournment, and following specialist reports, dismissal of the case, on the assumption that appropriate applications would then have been made. The Crown's expert, Dr. Melanie Liebenberg, told the Court that a naturally occurring anatomical feature was suspicious. The above document reveals more than that little error, it also reveals that if the girl had been penetrated as claimed, there would have been physical evidence to back that up. When as a matter of fact the girl was "tightly closed and could not be opened with labial traction." Virginity tests should be mandatory in all cases where penetration is alleged. It's time for a change in the law to protect victims of false allegations. Children from single parent families are more prone to making false allegations - especially against departing (foster/step) parents, who they treat as disposable items against which to vent their frustrations at being abandoned by their biological fathers. Anyone legally aided in a British court is unlikely to receive a fair trial. There is no right of appeal in the UK contrary to SDG 16 of the United Nations sustainability goals. The Criminal Cases Review Commission appear to biased in the extreme where masons are involved.

ABOUT THE CCRC

Why does it take so long for this organisation to do their job properly. Men and women imprisoned on false or misleading information come our of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth's prisons ruined in social and financial terms while those who are innocent rot and degenerate as human beings.

In another case that we are following the CCRC believe that they can openly discriminate between one case and another even where the circumstances are identical. It appears that where Sussex police are concerned there may be strong masonic connections where their victim was engaged to be married to the daughter of a retired builder turned councillor, but that when the engagement to his daughter was called off the woman and her daughter conspired to invent a series of attacks with the help of a teacher (who conveniently lost her notes) and a doctor who was prepared to lie in court and who had not completed internal vaginal investigations because the girl who was being groomed by the police and social services presented as intact. I.e. she had not been penetrated as claimed.

This information was denied to the convicting jury and the judge also added to the confusion in not realising that a diary entered as evidence was not that of the defendant, but the mother of the girl making the accusations. This diary proved that the girl was lying in that she had claimed rape at a location other than her family home in addition to assaults at her home, but at the other location where she claimed to have been penetrated on many occasions, there was as a matter of forensic fact only one occasion when the defendant and the girl were alone, and that was a dedicated visit to repair a bicycle chain with a thank you note for doing that.

The point here is that regardless of the claims of penetration in the family home the girl was intact, whereas if the assaults had been as numerous as claimed the girl would have had a gaping vagina.

That the judge failed to appreciate any of this and summed up the evidence incorrectly calls into question the competence of the court as a requirement of Article 5 of the Human Rights Act 1998, which Giles York's team knew would be the result if the Crown Prosecution Service could find the right judge in the right court. And this they managed, for Hove is a court where ultra conservative juries are formed that will convict on lesser evidence than would a jury in Lewes.

It did not help matters where the defence solicitor and barrister would not challenge the medical evidence despite umpteen request from the defendant to do so. The poor chap was convicted on false evidence, serving almost four years in prison for a crime that did not exist. He is still required to register on the sex offenders register and the media hype that helped to convict him virtually destroyed his business life.

LINKS & REFERENCE

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/13/man-wrongly-convicted-sexual-assault-freed-17-years

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