It is almost impossible
to imagine the pain of your son being murdered. But what is it like when
you discover that one of the men jailed for life for his murder was actually
innocent and the guilty man is still alive and well somewhere in your community?
BBC News Online spoke to John Suffield, who faced just such a dilemma.
John Suffield believes one of the men convicted of
his son's murder is as much a victim as himself. When Mr Suffield heard
evidence John Kamara might have been wrongly convicted he not only campaigned
for his freedom but embraced him publicly, urged the Home Office and the
Probation Service to do all they could to resettle him, and put pressure
on the police to reopen the case.
The ordeal left them feeling like they had both been
victims of a miscarriage of justice.
The nightmare began on 13 March 1981 when 23-year-old
John Suffield was stabbed 19 times during a robbery at the betting shop
in Toxteth, Liverpool, where he worked. Two men escaped with £176.
Within days Merseyside Police had arrested two men
and before the year was out Mr Kamara and his co-accused Raymond Gilbert
had been convicted and jailed for life.
Advised not to attend trial
Mr Kamara pleaded not guilty but Gilbert changed
his plea to guilty at the last moment.
Mr Suffield's father, John, 66, was advised by police
not to attend the trial but he turned up on the last day to see justice
done.
"That was the way it stayed for 14 years, into the
15th year. I had heard nothing about either man and I considered they were
both free, as they had served their tariffs of 10 and 15 years," he said.
But one day in 1994 the Suffield family received
a letter from the makers of the TV programme Trial & Error who
wrote to say they had been investigating Mr Kamara's case for several years
and believed he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
"That rocked us back on our heels," said Mr Suffield,
a retired office manager.
But the Suffields were forced to admit that Mr Kamara
was innocent having learned of the evidence that:
• the identity parade used to identify Mr Kamara
had been botched and was illegal
• the prosecution had withheld 201 witness statements
from the defence, some of which were crucial.
'Focus for my hatred'
When the realisation had sunk in, Mr Suffield, said
he felt a lot of guilt: "I had used John Kamara to vent my anger at what
had happened. I had used him as a focus for my hatred. But I felt guilt,
because the man was innocent of the murder of my son."
It took another six years before he was finally freed.
In March last year the Court of Appeal quashed Mr Kamara's conviction as
unsafe. Lord Justice Otton described it as a "difficult, worrying and complex
case".
In the days before the hearing, Mr Suffield wrote
to Merseyside Probation Service and faxed Home Office Minister Paul Boateng
to point out that Mr Kamara was likely to be released and to seek assurances
that he would not simply be thrown on the street, like many victims of
miscarriages of justice.
"In the event, the probation service was there to
meet him, but the arrangements they made were totally inadequate," said
Mr Suffield.
'He has nothing to fear'
He subsequently met Mr Kamara and publicly embraced
him, telling him he had "nothing to fear" from him, his wife or his five
children, who were all convinced of his innocence.
"In many ways, we are as much victims of a miscarriage
of justice as John Kamara," said Mr Suffield, who is vice-chairman of a
group called Support After Murder and Manslaughter (SAMM) which helps relatives
whose loved ones have been slain.
The family is not happy with the way Merseyside Police
dealt with the case or their refusal to reopen the file.
Mr Suffield told BBC News Online: "A third
man, who was named on the Trial & Error programme, told the
police he had actually carried out the murder, not Kamara. He was offered
limited immunity by the police if he would go on record but he refused."
Mr Suffield said he was not satisfied with the police,
who said after the trial they were not looking with anyone else in connection
with the murder.
'This is not justice'
"That is not satisfactory. This is not justice for
my son," said Mr Suffield.
He has these words of advice for families who are
faced with the possibility that their loved ones' killers were wrongly
convicted:
"They have to make themselves aware of the facts.
They have a duty to get to the bottom of what the offender, or alleged
offender, is saying."
To complicate matters Gilbert, who pleaded guilty,
now claims he is innocent but the Criminal Cases Review Commission refused
to refer his case back to the Court of Appeal and Mr Suffield is convinced
of his guilt.
A Merseyside police spokesman said the 201 pieces
of evidence had been handed over by the police to the prosecution and it
was they who had failed to disclose them to the defence. He said the force
would investigate if further evidence came to light.
• The Kamara case was the subject of a special edition
of Rough Justice, shown on BBC One on 17 April 2001
