An article two and a half years later on how Andrew Evans has coped with being released after 25 years in prison: The Guardian 12 May 1999

Andrew Evans awarded compensation totalling one million pounds: The Guardian 9 June 2000

Twenty-five years after a teenage soldier confessed to murder because he dreamt of the dead schoolgirl's face, the Court of Appeal has set him free. The conviction of Andrew Evans, jailed at 17 for murdering Judith Roberts, 14, was held to be unsafe. Under today's criminal evidence rules, Mr Evans's confessions would be inadmissible. There was also doubt about psychiatric evidence.

The girl was battered to death near her home in Tamworth, Staffordshire, in 1972. For more than 20 years, Mr Evans had accepted his guilt after being told that there were no grounds for appeal. He had no recollection of the murder but told police: "I keep seeing a face. I want to see a picture of her. I wonder if I've done it."

Mr Evans, who will receive expert help in readjusting to the outside world, said after the three-minute hearing: "This verdict means that my long nightmare is finally over. For more than 25 years, I have been held responsible for a crime I did not commit. I will always be in debt to those who fought to bring me justice, never doubting my innocence, and supporting me through some dark times.

"My family and myself can now begin to be together, and start to heal the wounds caused by my wrongful imprisonment. Today is the first step to a life beyond injustice."

He began a campaign in 1994 to prove his innocence by contacting the organisation JUSTICE. As a consequence he was moved from an open prison to a high-security jail.

It was shown that no blood from the girl had been discovered on Mr Evans's clothing and that an unidentified fingerprint on her cycle had not been his.

The appeal judges, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, the Lord Chief Justice, Mr Justice Jowitt and Mr Justice Douglas Brown, were critical of the original police inquiry. They said: "Judged by the rules and standards of today, the conduct of this investigation by the police left much to be desired. The appellant was not cautioned as and when he should have been; he was not seen by a doctor when he first appeared at the police station ... he was not offered the assistance of a solicitor."

But the judges conceded: "It seems likely that the police suspected the appellant of being mentally deranged. Our overall impression is that they treated him with sympathy and understanding."

Lord Justice Bingham said that in June 1972, Mr Evans was serving at Whittington Barracks, Lichfield, a few miles from where the body was found. "He had an unsuccessful childhood and adolescence, suffering from low self-esteem and a sense of failure." He had joined the Army in the hope of proving himself."

Mr Evans was discharged on medical grounds after an asthma attack and handed in his uniform on June 8, 1972, the day after the murder. He said on a questionnaire that he had stayed in the barracks between 6 pm and 10.30 pm on June 7, naming three soldiers who, he said, could verify that.

In October 1972 police called at his grandmother's house to ask him further questions as they had discovered that two of the soldiers had left the barracks before June 7 and they could not trace the third. The next morning, Mr Evans, who was taking a prescribed drug for depression, told his grandmother that he was going to the police station because he wanted to see a photograph of the murdered girl.

Lord Bingham said in the written ruling: "He was obviously worried, as if the matter had been on his mind all night, and she was unable to reassure him."

After telling police of his dream, he was asked whether he had killed the girl. He replied: "This is it: I don't know. Show me a picture and I'll tell you if I've seen it."

The judges held that original psychiatric testimony that Mr Evans had been suffering from amnesia could not be relied upon. A doctor told the Court of Appeal that Mr Evans has suffered "false memory" because of his extreme anxiety and hysterical state.

Staffordshire Police said that it did not intend to reopen the case as all lines of inquiry had been followed. A spokesman added that police had followed the procedures then
in place "and there was never any question of misconduct by any of those officers".

A former soldier who confessed to police that he murdered a 14-year-old girl was freed by the Appeal Court yesterday after spending 25 years in jail.

Andrew Evans, originally treated by police as a "fantasist" when he told of seeing the girl's face in his dreams, was described by Justice, a legal human rights organisation, as Britain's longest-serving victim of a miscarriage of justice.

Justice said psychiatrists agreed that his circumstances were similar to those of a released hostage. He now required "intensive aftercare" to prepare him for the outside world.

The Home Office said a decision was likely to be made within days by Sir David Calcutt, QC, an independent assessor, on an interim compensation payment.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham, sitting with Mr Justice Jowitt and Mr Justice Douglas Brown, ruled in the Appeal Court that the confessions were "entirely unreliable".

Mr Evans, now 42, of Longton, near Stoke-on-Trent, was 17 when he was convicted at Birmingham Crown Court in April 1973 of murdering Judith Roberts, a schoolmaster's daughter who was beaten to death near her home in Tamworth, Staffs.

Mr Evans, who was discharged from the Army as medically unfit because of asthma on the day after the murder in June 1972, later told police of a recurring dream in which he kept seeing the girl's face. In a subsequent interview, he told detectives: "I am sure I killed her. Do you think I did?"

The defence at his trial argued that he was suffering from hysterical amnesia and, having witnessed the crime and failed to go to the girl's help, had cast himself in the role of her killer.

Lord Bingham said Bruce Houlder, QC, representing the Crown at the appeal, had submitted that "even accepting the unreliability of the appellant's confessions as confessions, that they contained information inconsistent with any explanation other than the guilt of the appellant as murderer". In support of this submission, Mr Houlder had referred to intimate details concerning the victim's body and on Mr Evans's apparently reliable recollection of the area where the body was found.

"These were formidable points, the effect of which cannot be lightly dismissed," Lord Bingham said. "If, to allow the appeal, we were required to be satisfied of the appellant's innocence, we would not be so satisfied. But that is not our task."

The law required the court to allow the appeal if it considered the conviction unsafe.

Lord Bingham said it had been "an extremely difficult and anxious appeal". Leaving aside Mr Evans's suspect alibi, psychiatric evidence had left the 1973 jury to decide whether he committed the murder or was present at the scene. The source of his knowledge of certain details was not an issue at trial. The Lord Chief Justice said: "It is impossible for this court, in the absence of full scrutiny and examination, now to be sure.

"These matters were never explored before the jury as they would have been had the case, as it now is, been that which the jury had to decide. Given the obvious caution which is needed before convicting a defendant on this ground, we do not now conclude that it would be safe for us to base our conclusion on matters never fully explored before the jury."

During the appeal, Patrick O'Connor, QC, counsel for Mr Evans, said the "remarkable" fact that Mr Evans had not previously appealed was entirely consistent with his "vulnerability" and mental condition. Until 1991, he had been unable to face the possibility that he was innocent.

Had a solicitor and doctor been called in after his arrest, he would have been diagnosed as unfit to be interviewed and would never have made the confessions. Mr O'Connor said Mr Evans had used his trial as "an exercise to see for himself whether he was guilty. He did not know if he was guilty".

Lord Bingham said that by the rules and standards of today, the conduct of the police investigation "left much to be desired", though officers appear to have treated Mr Evans with sympathy and understanding.

A man is locked up for a quarter of a century for a murder he didn't commit. When he comes out he doesn't know his cheesecake from his ciabatta, and his greatest joy is a flush toilet. Andrew Evans talks to Chris Arnot about the ways in which he is trying to come to terms with all he has lost

Andrew Evans scans the menu with a furrowed brow and asks: "What's cheesecake?" On being told that it's a pudding, he goes back to perusing the options and asks for "something simple, like a bacon sandwich". Easier said than done. He could have strips of grilled chicken or steak on ciabatta bread, or smoked salmon and scrambled egg in a bagel. But bacon sandwiches are not on the menu, so staff are unable to access a price through a till strictly controlled by a computer ordering system. Eventually, Evans settles for an "all-day breakfast", although it's three in the afternoon in a Nottingham cafe-bar.

Such places were unheard of in provincial England in 1972 when he was sent to prison for life for a crime he didn't commit. His was the longest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. He was 17 when he walked into a police station in Staffordshire and confessed to the murder of a 14-year-old girl in Tamworth. At the time, he had just been discharged from the army because of his asthma and was taking Valium for depression. Images of the girl's face came to him in a nightmare and, in a muddled state, he assumed that he had been responsible.

There were key aspects of his story which didn't tie in with the facts and he would later retract his statement and plead not guilty. Too late. By the time he emerged from the Court of Appeal a free man in December 1997, a quarter of a century had elapsed. The callow youth was now a man of 42 with grey hair and the beginnings of a middle-aged spread. He had gone in confused, depressed and barely literate. He emerged a prolific reader, a keen listener to Radios 4 and 3, able to write music and confident enough in his abilities at maths and English to teach fellow prisoners.

This transformation was largely due to his innate intelligence and resilience. Benign influences within 12 of Her Majesty's Prisons are far outweighed in his memories by the constant threat of violence from inmates and the terror of lying awake listening to night-time screams.

As he sits waiting for his late breakfast, his eyes are constantly darting from side to side as though expecting attack from behind.

"I must be getting better," he says, ruefully, "because at one time I'd have had to sit where you are with a wall behind me."

He had no illusions that life on the outside would be easy, but he remains staggered by the lack of preparation he received. "If I'd been a murderer," he says, "I'd have had professionals on my case 24 hours a day. But because I didn't do it, they didn't want to know."

He had to wait for his first £100,000 compensation from the Home Office, and legal representations are continuing for a proper settlement. So friends raised the £2,000 necessary to book him in immediately for 10 days at Ticehurst hospital in Kent, where Terry Waite had gone for counselling following his release in 1991 after almost five years as a hostage in Beirut.

It was at Ticehurst that Andrew met Sheila, a psychiatric unit administrator. She went out of her way to help him overcome what might seem simple problems, such as opening a bank account when he had no identification. "She was there for me," he says, "and I rushed into a relationship." Understandably, perhaps. He had little experience of women before he was locked away and his youth was stolen away from him. "With Sheila, I was trying to do everything and ended up with nothing," he admits. The relationship ended after a holiday together in Goa.

Back in England, he struggled to come to terms with what had changed in 25 years. Buses had become one-man operated, requiring the correct change and causing him to curse the inventor of the "ridiculously small" 5p piece. Supermarket shelves groaned with the sort of choices that didn't exist in 1972. "It freaked me out," he says.

"I kept expecting somebody to tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Oi, put that back.'" And the money? "Well, I'd expected prices to go up, of course, like the cost of coffee in prison canteens. But it still comes as a shock to pay £100 for a week's groceries." He is, though, enjoying cooking and eating good food. For 20 of his 25 years inside, he was a vegetarian - partly for moral reasons and partly to avoid gristly meat and what he calls "cockroach-enriched cabbage".

Out on the streets, he noticed another change. "There's no eye contact any more," he says, "as though people are anticipating aggression. I was walking through the middle of Nottingham one night when I saw this bloke attacking a woman. Everybody around was moving away. When I went back to help, he'd cleared off and the girl was in tears. I gave her £20 to get a taxi - at that time I was spending money like water - but the woman I was with told me I shouldn't get involved. People keep themselves to themselves much more than they did."

Evans lives alone in a rented bungalow in a pleasant part of Nottingham. "I couldn't hold down a job at the moment because I keep having these fits when I just curl up in a ball and sob," he says. At other times he can enjoy simple pleasures, like watching the history channel on cable television, going for country rides on his motor scooter and revelling in the view from his bedroom window - a gravel drive, trees and distant fields. "No barbed wire, searchlights and locked gates."

What he calls his "piece de resistance" is his flush toilet. "You never forget the smell from a plastic bucket in the corner of your cell in summer, " he says, "or the stench of 100 prisoners emptying their piss-pots." At least hygiene standards improved during his time inside. "At the Verne [in Dorset] there were three toilets between 20 on a landing. That's not too bad."

He would still be there now were it not for a chance meeting with Steve Elsworth, of Greenpeace, who had gone to the Verne prison to give a talk. He returned one visiting time and took detailed notes while Evans poured out his story. Elsworth passed on the details to two Midlands-based Carlton Television producers, John McLeod and Allister Craddock.

They featured his story, first in 1994 on Crime Stalker - fronted by John Stalker, the former assistant chief constable of Greater Manchester - and again in 1997 on a documentary called, appropriately enough, The Nightmare. Throughout, they worked closely with the human rights organisation, JUSTICE, whose lawyers would eventually secure Evans's release.

"I owe them all a great deal," he says. "I'm now becoming more comfortable with other people. But I've also become more and more aware of what they've known and what I've known over the past 25 years. It's only over the last few weeks or so that it's begun to dawn on me what I've lost."

A former soldier wrongly convicted at 17 of the murder of a schoolgirl was yesterday awarded £750,000 by the Home Office, bringing his total compensation to almost £1m.

Andrew Evans spent 25 years in jail for the murder of 14-year-old Judith Roberts before being freed by appeal court judges in 1997, the longest period served by a wrongly convicted person.

In the absence of scientific or eyewitness evidence, he was convicted through answers obtained using a so-called truth drug, brietal, which has since been discredited for inducing false memories.

Under today's rules of evidence, his confession would have been inadmissible, and there were also doubts raised about psychiatric evidence.

Yesterday's award will add up to almost £1m with interim payments, and is thought to be a record.

The highest award known to have been offered in such a case is £550,000 to Gerry Hunter, who spent more than 16 years in prison over the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. The group dubbed the Birmingham Six had previously rejected an offer of £400,000 each.

Mr Evans, now 45, said that yesterday marked the last day of his false imprisonment and the first day of his life.

"For the past two and a half years we have been fighting for this money and at last it has been sorted. I am relieved.

"I will never be fully free - every time I lock a door I have flashbacks to being in prison."

His solicitor, Dragan Plavsic, said: "With interim payments, Mr Evans's award is closer to £1m. I believe it may be the largest award of its type ever given because he is probably the person who has been locked away for the longest time.

"I think this was a reasonable settlement - the whole point is to try to repay the horror he has been through for the last 25 years."

Mr Evans was a soldier serving at Whittington barracks just outside Lichfield in June 1972 when the girl's body was found in a field six miles away.

The nervous and socially in adequate teenager, who was taking a prescription drug for depression, went to see police in October that year because he had dreamed of a girl's face.

Sobbing hysterically, he stumbled into a police station and asked to see a photograph of Judith Roberts.

Detectives initially dismissed him as a fantasist but over three days of questioning, began to accept his belief that he was the killer.

When officers asked him if he had murdered Judith, he said: "This is it - I don't know. Show me a picture and I will tell you if I've seen her."

Police said he recalled details that could have been known only by Judith's killer.

As the trial approached, he retracted his confession and lawyers on both sides agreed the use of a truth drug. He was sentenced to life in 1973.

In 1994 Mr Evans began a campaign to prove his innocence and contacted the human rights group Justice.

Mr Evans, who now lives in Nottingham and last month married Sue, 43, said: "I have lost most of my life. Now I have married and we are going to buy a house and settle down properly."

A spokeswoman for Justice said: "We are delighted to hear he has won his compensation battle."

A Home Office spokesman confirmed the payout had been made, but refused to comment on the amount.