£46.00 for First Year of Freedom

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https://www.insidejustice.co.uk/documentaries/john-kamara-life-after-life/9

After two decades of false imprisonment by the UK legal system, the UK government offers £46.00 to this falsely-imprisoned man to set himself up for his first year of freedom.

Barely enough for a second-hand suit of clothes from a charity shop and a cheap meal.

An open invitation to a vulnerable, poverty-stricken man to take desperate measures.

But John Kamara did not do this.

Instead, he continues his fight for justice for others suffering a similar fate.

Innocent years in prison from age 29 to 46

John, now 63, has been out of prison for 19 years now, the same length of time he spent behind bars for a crime he didn't commit back in 1981.

The Story

Two robbers wanted the contents of the safe in a betting shop on John's estate in Liverpool. The man who very quickly confessed to the crime wanted revenge because John had slept with his girlfriend. So one of them framed John Kamara. In short, he lied and the police chose to believe him. The thieves demanded the combination to the safe, but the manager of the shop, John Suffield had a speech impediment - a stutter. Terrified, he couldn't get the words out of his mouth. The thieves tortured him to death.

Armed from the start of their investigation with a wrong belief, the police got the wrong man. To date, the real criminal has never been brought before the courts to face justice.

Innocent, Abused, and Anonymous

John Suffield Senior, the father of the murdered man, acknowledges that John Kamara is innocent. The paths of these two men had crossed many times during the past 19 years, Mr. Suffield labouring under the false prosecution-inspired belief that John was a murderer, but the year 2000 was the first time they met face-to-face. Now knowing the truth, the two men shook hands, and the victim's father was able to congratulate John on the successful outcome of his appeal. This was the man who John Suffield Senior had thought for nearly 20 years had murdered his son.

Massive non-disclosure of evidence by the prosecution

Listening to the procedure in the Appeal Court, the murdered man's father had however gradually become completely convinced that evidence he had been aware of for many years, arguing strongly in favour of Kamara's innocence had never been brought to the court in the trial 19 years ago. This is despite the legal requirement that any evidence arguing against the prosecution's case must be presented to the defence team. This is the responsibility of the prosecution. But in this case, as in so many others, they had failed to do so. There had been a massive non-disclosure of exculpatory evidence by the prosecution. Because of this omission, and only because of this omission, Mr. Kamara had been targeted. The prosecution seemed determined to have him behind bars. Just as in the case of many other innocent people - for example Luke Mitchell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE5rMioQIlU) - the police had decided Mr. Kamara was guilty and proceeded to gather exclusive 'evidence' to support their guess. If it meant refusing to consider other evidence, the practice was to ignore it; hide it; fail to present it to the defence team.

Because of his refusal to show any remorse about the murder of course, John spent 16 years in solitary confinement. In the ordinary course of events, solitary confinement is given by visiting prison commissioners as a punishment for some crime committed in prison, such as attempting to escape, fighting, some drug offences for example. As the name suggests, solitary confinement involves spending 23 hours or more a day locked in a cell. Alone. Cut off from any companionship apart from the regular clockwork opening of the cell door for one of the prisoners accompanied by a key-jangling officer to deliver the tin-plated meal. Breakfast, dinner, tea, or cocoa in the evening.

Solitary confinement is often spoken of as mental torment, yet for John Kamara it was solitude that helped him remain focused while he fought his case from inside the prison walls.

He said: "I think what got me through it was being in solitary confinement where I could just focus on fighting my case and that was it. As for the Appeal process - two years into his sentence, in 1983, he was refused an appeal hearing. He was not granted an appeal until 2000, when judges at the Court of Appeal quashed his conviction.

"I thought, they can't put me any lower than where I am because

I was in segregation. They couldn't punish me because there was

nowhere else to put me. So I just stayed there. I was allowed to

exercise an hour a day but if it rained they only gave you half an hour.

One of the requirements for parole in the system is that the prisoner show clear signs of remorse for his crime, and an acknowledgement of how his behaviour has negatively impacted on his victim, and the victim's family, and the wider society. But of course, John was incapable of showing remorse, since he was not guilty of the crime. He had done nothing wrong. Had he decided to fake remorse in order to have an earlier release, that would have been tantamount to an admission of guilt. In which case, any chance of winning an appeal would have gone out of the window. But in fact as a man of principle, he bravely maintained his innocence throughout this time and kept up a relentless campaign to clear his name, writing 300,000 (three hundred thousand) letters to MPs, the European Parliament, the House of Lords - anybody he could think of, trying to win support. Even guilty prisoners could see that he was an innocent man, and many of them freely gave up a portion of their tiny prison allowance so he could purchase stamps, paper and writing equipment in his untiring campaign for justice. The prison somehow knew he was an innocent man. And yet, year after year appeals failed, inquiries went no-where, parole boards offering him the opportunity to win an earlier release failed him in his cause. But he never surrendered his innocence.

John moved away from Liverpool to rebuild his life as a 43 year-old in a very different world to the one he was taken from as a 24 year-old. He said: "When I went in to prison there were pound notes and ten shillings. When I came out there were 50p's and pound coins. There was no such thing as a mobile phone when I went away. When I first used a mobile phone I would always shout 'hello!' too loudly down the phone."