"I am overwhelmed with all that has happened. A few minutes ago I was a prisoner serving a life sentence for a crime I did not commit. I am now a free man". Andrew Adams

"This is a great day, a sad day and a shameful day. It is a great day because, after being in prison for fourteen years for a crime he did not commit, Mr Adams' conviction has finally been quashed. It is a shameful day because the material which has led the Court of Appeal to quash Mr Adams' conviction was there for his original lawyers to examine - something they failed to do. Finally, it is a sad day because Mr Royal's murderers are still at large". Ben Rose, solicitor for Adams,

"Andrew's case was prepared by Mary Foley, an unqualified and unsupervised clerk with John Foley & Co. The situation became worse when the barristers who were instructed were chosen because they had represented another man who had previously been charged and acquitted of the same crime. Those barristers had to withdraw late in the day and the Court has now confirmed it was 'a clear error' that John Foley & Co chose them and that the barristers ever accepted the instructions." Ben Rose

"During the past fourteen years my mum has died, my friends have got married, settled down and had children, whilst I have been in prison. I will now return to Newcastle and begin to rebuild the life I once had. I am so grateful to all those who have stood by me. Without them I would not be here today".

Hickman and Rose Solicitors represented Andrew Adams. They "specialise in cases involving allegations of poor work in criminal cases by solicitors and counsel."

Source: "Daniel Machover" <DMachover@hickmanandrose.co.uk> [relayed by MOJUK]

What price 14 years in jail for a murder conviction that was overturned?

Four years of freedom have brought Andrew Adams no job or home. He wants this week's ruling to bring him compensation

Andrew Adams was freed by the court of appeal in January 2007. More than four years later, he is still waiting for compensation.

When Andrew Adams contemplated his freedom after spending nearly 14 years in jail for murder, there was an optimism about his future evident in his words. "I might have lost a lot of years and I'm sad about that," he said. "But I'm also determined to correct it. Life goes on and I'm going to make something of it."

Four years after his release, Adams is struggling to fulfil the promise he made to himself. He lives in hostels, or sleeps on friends' floors, and is finding it extremely hard to take up his life once more.

Now 41, he has no work, no means of income and no stable base to call home. He was not prepared for release by the prison authorities because he refused to accept his guilt. He was never given advice about training, education, housing and employment, nor allowed to attend groups designed to help prisoners tackle behavioural problems such as alcoholism or depression.

"He is in a desperate situation," said his solicitor, Daniel Machover of Hickman Rose. "He was thrust into a world he had not been in since 1994. His mother died while he was inside, his father developed Alzheimer's. There is just no support for people like Andrew."

It was in 1990 that the events that were to put Adams in prison for all of his young adult life took place.

On 19 March that year, Jack Royal and his wife, Sonia, were together in their sitting room in South Tyneside. Royal had a history of violence. Three years earlier, he had stabbed a man to death. That man, David Thompson, was the brother of Adams' then girlfriend, Catherine Thompson.

Royal was acquitted of murder on the basis of self-defence but lived in fear of a revenge attack.

At 11.35pm that night, Royal answered the door to his home. As he stepped into the front porch he was shot in the face and died almost instantly.

Prosecutors alleged that Catherine had persuaded Adams to murder Royal in revenge for the death of her brother.

Adams stood trial with Catherine, and his best friend, John Hands. Hands was acquitted of murder and Catherine of soliciting the murder, but Adams, then 23, was convicted and sentenced to life.

Throughout his time in prison, Adams always protested his innocence. When his case was taken up by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, it found that his defence team had failed to discover significant available evidence about the main prosecution witness, a former schoolfriend called Kevin Thompson. The evidence suggested Thompson had agreed to testify after negotiating a deal in two off-the-record conversations with Northumbria Police that enabled him and his girlfriend to escape prison for the armed robbery of an elderly couple.

The commission also interviewed jurors and discovered that at least one had personal knowledge of Adams and told fellow jurors he was a "bad lad" who had been involved in drugs.

Allowing the appeal in January 2007, 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."

This last comment has been seized on by the justice secretary to mean Adams is not a victim of a "miscarriage of justice" within the meaning of section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, which entitles such victims to state compensation.

Adams has fought this decision all the way to the supreme court, where Britain's most senior judges will determine on Wednesday whether he and up to 200 others should receive compensation.

"Regardless of the outcome of this case," said Machover, "there is a need for the Ministry of Justice to review what it does with these handful of people who need some extra form of support because they have not been prepared for release. Whether they have been fully exonerated or not, they are entitled to be presumed innocent and to be treated as human beings."