Wrongly jailed man to pay for prison 'bed and board'

A man freed after spending 11 years in jail for a murder he did not commit has been charged £37,000 for his bed and board while behind bars.

The charge for prison living expenses was subtracted from Michael O'Brien's compensation payout after the Court of Appeal quashed a 1999 conviction for murdering a Cardiff newsagent.

He has been offered almost £650,000 but said he was taking legal advice about the award before accepting it.

Mr O'Brien, 34, of Caerau, Cardiff, said the offer was absurd. "They don't charge guilty people for bed and board, they only charge innocent people.

"I'm absolutely livid and I'm really angry about the size of the award because it doesn't reflect the hardship I suffered, the effect it had on my standing within the community and my distress. My daughter and my father died while I was in prison and my whole life was turned upside down."

Mr O'Brien, who at the time had been working as a painter and decorator, was arrested in November 1987 over the murder of newsagent Philip Saunders. Mr Saunders died in hospital five days after being attacked with a shovel in his back yard after he returned home from his kiosk at Cardiff railway station on 12 October, 1987. He was never able to tell police who his killer was.

Mr O'Brien, who had no previous convictions, was convicted a year after his arrest along with two other men. Central to the prosecution case was a confession made by another of the men, Darren Hall, who was 18 at the time. Mr Hall told police that he had been acting as lookout for the others during a bungled robbery. However, it later emerged that while in police custody Mr Hall was at times handcuffed to radiators and denied access to solicitors. He later retracted his confession and was found to be suffering from a personality disorder that made him prone to exaggeration. Once he admitted to a robbery that took place while he was on remand for another offence.

The men – known as the Cardiff Newsagent Three – were released on bail in December 1998. Their names were cleared a year later by the Court of Appeal.

A Home Office spokesman said yesterday: "The saved living expenses deducted in Mr O'Brien's compensation is part of the assessment formula. If he refuses, the assessment it will be looked at again although the compensation will not necessarily change as a result."

The Home Office said an assessor, appointed by the Home Secretary, determined the amount to be paid.

A spokeswoman for the Howard League for Penal Reform questioned whether the deduction was legal. "It sounds like they are just being silly to me," she said.

The compensation offer includes £125,000 for "hardship, deprivation and gross inconvenience" due to loss of liberty and more than £186,000 for loss of average earnings for manual work plus interest.

Mr O'Brien said after his conviction was quashed that he intended to pursue a compensation claim, but added that nothing could make up for time spent in prison.

He said yesterday: "If I'd known they were going to charge me I would have lived like a toff. I would have ordered champagne, caviar and steak."