Sam Hallam and Jemima Umo and their phones
Hallam appealed in 2006, but his
conviction was upheld. He then applied to the CCRC to have his case reviewed.
The CCRC instructed Thames Valley Police to make further enquiries.
Thames Valley officers found
that Hallam had two mobile phones, which the police had seized and retained.
One was a smartphone, from which they downloaded data and found previously
undiscovered material. The phone’s memory included photographs taken on the
afternoon of 11 October at the home of Hallam's grandmother, and of his father
at the George and Vulture public house at 18.41. The phone’s memory also
contained a photograph of Harrington taken on the afternoon or evening of the
day after the murder. That provided ‘a credible explanation for his belief that
he was with Timmy Harrington.’[2]
The conviction was found to be unsafe because it showed that Hallam was
confused rather than deliberately untruthful when he said he was with
Harrington at the time the crime was committed, and because the photographs
which placed him at the George and Vulture provided a partial alibi. They did
not however provide absolute proof that he could not have been at the crime
scene.
Hallam's supporters and legal advisers could not have done more than Thames Valley Police and the CCRC did.[3] But they could have demanded that more work should be done. Lady Justice Hallett, delivering the judgment of the Court of Appeal Criminal Division (CACD), commented:
'For reasons which escape us [the phones] do not seem to have been interrogated by either the investigating officers or the defence team. We can understand why cell site evidence in relation to the use of the phones may have been of limited value given the close proximity of the masts, the various scenes, and the homes of those involved. However, given the attachment of young and old to their mobile phones, we cannot understand why someone from either the investigating team or the defence team did not think to examine the phones attributable to the appellant. An analysis of mobile phone evidence played a part in the investigation... [W]e would have thought that even a cursory check might have produced some interesting results.' [4]
Lady Hallett’s comments are significant, because decisions
by the police and defence lawyers concerning which lines of enquiry should be
followed are not usually the concern of the Court. But the analysis of phone
contents and cell site analysis to discover the location of handsets and of
their direction of movement at key times are both routine, and were routinely
carried out on the phones of other suspects in the same case. For Hallam, they
would be the obvious source of evidence which could support or contradict his
alibi. For this reason, supporters making an application to the CCRC should have demanded a more thorough reinvestigation of the Metropolitan Police’s original investigation. They should have asked the CCRC to search the HOLMES database and other
enquiry records to establish whether the contents of Hallam’s phones had in
fact been downloaded (but not disclosed). They should have asked the CCRC to find out
whether in fact the call data had been requested and obtained from the phone
service provider.
The CACD quashed Hallam’s convictions because of the support
to his case given by the fresh evidence found by the Thames Valley Police, but
if the Metropolitan Police had carried out cell site analysis and retained the
call data, then not only would the case put to the CACD been stronger and more
certain, but also the case could have been strong enough to show that Hallam
could not have committed the crime and was therefore entitled to compensation
for his wrongful conviction. Whatever Lady Justice Hallett says about the precision of cell site analysis in an urban setting, if the service provider's call data had been supplemented by measurements carried out at the crime scene by qualified engineers could have shown that Hallam's phone was never present at the crime scene, but was somewhere else - and that might be the reason why material was suppressed. It appears that the original investigating team carried out cell site analysis on the location of phones belonging to other suspects, so why would they have neglected Hallam's phones?
The campaign which supported Sam Hallam's claim of innocence succeeded brilliantly in its main aim of overturning his murder conviction, but he should have the compensation he deserves. The Lord Justices of Appeal appear to be dropping strong hints that the police always knew more than they were prepared to admit. In a more recent case, seventeen year old Jemima Umo’s convictions for assault and possession of a firearm were overturned when fresh evidence from a witness’s phone handset was obtained and submitted in her appeal. ‘Somewhat surprisingly,’ commented Fulford LJ, delivering the judgment of the CACD in 2020, ‘the prosecution did not attempt to look at or copy the text message on [the witness’s] telephone, notwithstanding the fact that during course of his interview he had handed his mobile phone containing the message(s) from Ms Maduro to the police.’[5]
In summary, it is recommend that in cases like these, supporters should assume in the first place that investigations have been conducted competently, but the material obtained not disclosed. Material could have been suppressed by designation as irrelevant or classed as sensitive and misleadingly described on the MG6 disclosure schedule (a common problem). It would not be difficult for the CCRC to trace it.
Andrew Green
4 January 2021
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