Posted on 08/27/2024 11:38:04 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Michael O'Brien, wrongly convicted of the murder of Phillip Saunders in Cardiff in 1987, says he feels it is the 'final insult' and he feels 'really aggrieved'
An innocent man who spent 11 years and 43 days in prison for a crime he didn’t commit has demanded £37,000 which was deducted from his compensation package for board during his time in prison. Michael O’Brien, 54, was 19 when he was arrested and later charged for the murder of businessman Phillip Saunders in Cardiff in 1987.
Mr Saunders, a newsagent who had been to the pub after finishing a day's work, was found in his garden having been brutally beaten with a spade for his takings. But it later emerged Mr O’Brien didn’t commit the crime and Mr Saunders’ loved ones remain without answers 37 years later.
On the night of Mr Saunders' murder Mr O'Brien was out stealing a car with Ellis Sherwood and Darren Hall. When he was initially pulled in by South Wales Police as part of their murder inquiry he never thought he would lose more than a decade of his life behind bars. You can read more about what happened to Mr Saunders here.
Mr O’Brien spent 11 years in prison before his conviction was quashed and he was awarded more than £600,000 in compensation by the UK Government. But £37,000 was deducted from that final compensation fee for things like food and a bed, referred to as a board and lodging charge, during those 11 years.
Before the high-profile exoneration of Andrew Malkinson last year, who was formally cleared of a rape he didn’t commit after he’d served 17 years in prison, charging exonerated prisoners for their board following their release by deducting it from a compensation package was commonplace.
But following the public furore around Mr Malkinson being told he’d be deducted that sum, then justice secretary Alex Chalk announced jail boarding charges for exonerated prisoners would be stopped in August last year. Mr Chalk said: “It is not right that victims of devastating miscarriages of justice can have deductions made for saved living expenses.”
But ex-prisoners in the UK who were exonerated long before Mr Malkinson, like Mr O’Brien, haven’t been offered money they say is being kept from them for their board and lodging while in prison. The Ministry of Justice says the exonerees would not receive compensation for those deductions "retrospectively". But Mr O’Brien, alongside other exonerees, says he will keeping calling on the Ministry of Justice to compensate him "fully".
A petition which Mr O’Brien has set up calling for exonerees to be awarded board money has received more than 56,000 signatures online so far, which you can see here. “So many people have supported us. We’ve even got MPs supporting us and peers in the House of Lords supporting us,” Mr O’Brien, who now lives in Aberdare, told WalesOnline.
"What's the logic in this? They don't charge guilty people, they only charge innocent people. I think it’s really a final insult for what they’ve done to me and the rest of the people wrongly convicted and imprisoned.
"I think I’m well within my rights to feel really aggrieved. This isn't just about me - it's about every individual who has been wrongfully convicted and then charged for their stay in prison - a place they should never have been in the first place."
At the time of his arrest Mr O'Brien was married and was expecting his first child. "It's had a profound effect on me," he added. "I lost my daughter while in prison. It destroyed my marriage. I've lost a hell of a lot. I do find it really difficult. I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and I'm seeing a psychiatrist and I imagine I will do for the rest of my life."
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice responded: "Financial awards made after August 6, 2023 as part of the Miscarriage of Justice scheme will not have saved living expenses deducted. However, in line with the standard approach to changes in government policy, the change announced last year does not apply retrospectively.”
The entire West needs an enema that eliminates the entire current crop of government employees.
He got off easy. Those are Motel6 rates.
You think it’s better in the non-West?
What every government wants to do to its citizens.
Make your excuses. You are only lying to yourself.
Did the non-West lock up its entire citizenry? GFY.
1. He’s innocent of the murder conviction... but he is a convict picked up while stealing vehicles.
2. He’s got a good point... the guilty aren’t charged room and board, only the innocent.
Maybe you are lying to yourself, if you want to go full communist/globalist. How is your Imam?
NO PROBLEM! Take it off the $50,000,000 of my lawsuit.
Like I said, the West is no longer the bastion of freedom. You can delude yourself but, just know, if you do it just makes you a despicable cuck.
You don’t want to be a despicable cuck do you?
How incredibly stupid could the prison system be to do this? This is pure bureaucratic stupidity at its finest. They had to know this was going to be in the news. They’ll back down immediately.
China sure did.
It’s not the government employees as much as it is who gets elected to the legislatures. Such people enact laws & regulations that often require utterly stupid behavior from government employees.
Welsh Lives Matter.
Must be white.
You are also crazy. Most of those countries lock up people at the highest rates in the world, including China and Russia, even though NGOs downplay their number.
I assume you live in the non-west? Because why would you live here?
“On the night of Mr Saunders’ murder Mr O’Brien was out stealing a car with Ellis Sherwood and Darren Hall.”
Well, with an alibi like that, it’s a mystery why the police would ever suspect him.
There was a day that I had a lot of respect for the United Kingdom.
Indeed, I remember Margaret Thatcher with the greatest respect. My oh my how far down and how fast UK has gone.
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