Man fails to win compensation for 14 years in prison

A former aircraft engineer who spent 14 years behind bars for a murder he says he did not commit today failed in his latest bid to win compensation.

Andrew Adams, 37, from Chapel Park, Newcastle, had his conviction quashed in January 2007 after it was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

He was 23 when he was found guilty at Newcastle Crown Court in 1993 of the shooting of retired science teacher Jack Royal.

Allowing his appeal, Lord Justice Gage, Mr Justice Silber and Mr Justice Treacy said that various "criticisms and failures" relating to the handling of his defence had the cumulative effect of being "sufficient to render the verdict unsafe".

But, they added: "We are not to be taken as finding that if there had been no such failures the appellant would inevitably have been acquitted."

Today, two High Court judges dismissed Mr Adams's challenge to a decision by the Secretary of State for Justice, in January last year, that he was not entitled to compensation for a miscarriage of justice.

Mr Justice Simon, sitting in London with Lord Justice Maurice Kay, said that his appeal succeeded on the basis that the conduct of his case by his legal representatives - relating to the failure to discover and deploy three pieces of evidence from the unused material made available by the prosecution - had been inadequate and that this had deprived him of a fair trial.

Rejecting his case, they said that it had not been shown beyond a reasonable doubt that there had been a miscarriage of justice, and the evidence which was not deployed could not be described as new or newly-discovered fact.

The March 1990 shooting of 58-year-old Mr Royal, after he answered the door to his home in Laburnum Grove, Sunniside, Gateshead, was said to have been a revenge killing for the fatal stabbing of a man during a street fight in 1987.

Mr Royal had been acquitted of murder after arguing that he had acted in self-defence.