Sam Hallam: Miscarriage of Justice
There was talk of revenge, and rumours of a fight reached the ears of a group of youths at the Toffee Park Youth Club on St Luke’s Estate in East London.
On Monday 11 October 2004 at night, and under artificial light, forty or fifty of them gathered in Bath Street (a small side street off Old Street) near to the estate, some intending to attack 20-year-old Louis Colley and others just wishing to watch.
Colley was confronted by some of the group. One tried to punch Colley. He fought back. But he fell to the ground and was set upon with fists, feet and weapons. Witnesses saw baseball bats and knives. One witness described seeing a baseball bat with a screw or nail protruding from its end.
Fortunately for Colley, his friend, Essayas Kassahun valiantly came to his aid. Colley managed to free himself and ran round the corner into Old Street and, although he was brought to the ground a second time near a branch of Somerfield, he again managed to escape and take refuge inside the store.
But Kassahun paid a terrible price for his gallantry. In the absence of Colley, he was now the focus of the attack during which he was struck on the head with a sharp, thin object which penetrated his skull. The attackers made off, some on bicycles.
Bleeding heavily, Kassahun was helped across Old Street to a nearby Shell Garage.
A trail of his blood from the Bath Street road sign to the corner of Old Street and across Old Street suggested that he had sustained his injury in Bath Street.
By the time the police and ambulance arrived to take him to hospital, Kassahun had lost consciousness. Two days later he died.
It was impossible to establish whether the injury had been caused by a knife or a modified baseball bat because of the extensive and necessary surgery need to try to save his life.
Inevitably, in cases of this kind, with a large number of people seeing different things from different angles at slightly different times, eye witness accounts conflict. It was a short-lived and fast-moving incident, and highly distressing for those who knew the victims.
Although a large number was involved, none stayed in one place for long. The attackers attempted to disguise themselves by raising the hoods of their hoodies.
A number of youths were arrested and brought before the court. Some faced murder charges and/or charges of violence and disorder.
17 year old Sam Hallett – who I shall variously describe as Sam or the Appellant in this case – was convicted of murder, conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm and violent disorder. He was sentenced to be detained during Her Majesty’s pleasure, and the trial judge recommended that he serve a minimum of 12 years.
Sam Hallett appealed his convictions one of the grounds being that the evidence against him was so thin that the judge should have withdrawn it from the jury. His appeal was dismissed on the basis that the identification evidence was sufficient coming, as it did, from two sources and, in any event, supported by the fact that the Appellant had deliberately put forward a false alibi.
Phoebe Henville, also aged 17, was one of the principal witnesses whose evidence lay at the heart of the case against Sam. Kassahun had been her former boyfriend. She was still at the Shell petrol station when she was spoken to by three police officers.
She told PC Redknap that there had been a fight between youths at the petrol station and the Murray Grove boys. She had seen a black male hit Kassahun over the head with a baseball bat.
She told PC Dearden that she had seen about 30 black men and some white men attack Kassahun and that one of the men struck him to the head with a baseball bat.
She named three people involved as Beku, Pellan and Kennedy.
She told PC Davis that she had seen 50 youths surrounding someone at the junction of Bath Street and Old Street. She saw them punching and kicking before one of the men drew a baseball bat and hit the victim with it. She told Davis that three people were involved: Jamie and Danny Martin and Bullabeck.
Later that evening and into the early hours, Phoebe Henville was interviewed at the police station in considerable detail. In her statement she identified four people as taking part in the incident, the three already named and one other. She made no mention of the Appellant or of a white young man with distinctive features who she recognised but could not name. The significance of that is that later she claimed that within ten minutes of the fight she heard that someone called Sam was involved or was to blame.
Pressed by the police if she could provide more evidence to identify Kassahun’s attackers, she said, “No, not really … these were the ones in the group causing the trouble.” She said that she “fixed” on the black boy walking past with the bat and the smirk.
At around 7.15 pm on 13 October there was a chance meeting between Phoebe Henville and her friend Sarah Beattie with Sam Hallam in the street. The following day she was again interviewed by the police.
She told them about the meeting and that she recognised Sam as someone who had been involved in the attack. She referred to his being distinctive and having strange features, as if there was something wrong with him. She said he looked “possibly disabled” and had dark brown hair. She also said he was someone she had seen around on the street “always causing trouble”. She added “There were a couple of them known for nicking mopeds.”
There was nothing in any part of that description, save the brown hair, that fitted the description of Sam.
In her evidence at trial, the judge interposed at one stage to say that Phoebe Henville may have been describing the attack on Colley and not the attack on Kassahun, but she said that after the group split up she realised that the person on the ground was Kassahun. As he was helped to the Shell Garage she saw people walking away and a short black boy was standing on the wall holding a bat.
Initially in her evidence she did not mention the Appellant. After prompting she recalled the meeting with her friend Sarah Beattie. She said she had heard the name Sam Hallam mentioned but had not been able to put a face to the name. She claimed to have recognised him as someone she had seen in the crowd outside Somerfield on 11 October attacking the person in the middle. Although she did not see exactly what he was doing, she saw him coming away from the crowd. She did not see any weapon in his hand.
When Phoebe was cross-examined by Sam’s counsel, she agreed she had heard a rumour from a number of people that someone called Sam had been involved. She was asked why she had not told the police earlier that there had been a white boy whom she had recognised and she responded “Because I didn’t know his name.”
She said the Appellant was one of the earlier ones to break away from the group around Kassahun. Counsel asked: “The position is it may not have been him but someone who looked like him?” Phoebe replied: “Yes. I saw someone that looked like him running towards me and when I was talking to people they told me it was a Sam, and someone told me it was Sam Hallam and Sarah pointed him out to me.” She agreed that she could not be sure that it was the Appellant she had seen on the 11th.
Sarah Beattie was not present at the incident on 11 October but said she had known the Appellant for about a year. When she and Phoebe saw him on the 15th Phoebe became distressed. She became very emotional when she learned that Kassahun had died
After they passed Sam Hallam in the street he kept looking around at Phoebe. Phoebe asked him “Are you proud of what you have done?” He said, “What?” Sarah Beattie said, “You are a murderer.” She said he grinned in an evil way. She also alleged that the Appellant threatened them both and said he would petrol bomb their house.
Sarah said Phoebe told her that the Appellant was the one holding the bat, and that the one called Sam was “kind of chubby” and pale. Although he had his hood up, she could still see his blond hair. She also agreed in cross-examination that in her earlier witness statement she had made no mention of any threat of a petrol bomb (which Phoebe had not mentioned either).
Eventually, the Criminal Cases Review Commission investigated Sam Hallam’s case and ordered a fresh police inquiry by an outside force. It gathered new evidence and the case was referred back to a freshly constituted Court of Appeal who gave its judgment on 17 May 2012.
What was not known at trial, but what the Court now learned, was that at 7.30 pm on 13 October, a Gary Rees left a message for the police to the effect that there was a rumour going about that a Sam Bass was responsible for the attack, and an address was given. At 10.30 pm Rees again rang to say that the name Sam Bass was a mistake; the name should have been Sam Allen who was “holding the bat with the nail in the end.”
Other identification evidence at trial came from a man called Khelfa. He was a friend of Colley and Kassahun. But his identification was not independent of Phoebe Henville and when first seen he also failed to mention Sam Hallam whom he knew and with whom he had been at school. He said Sam Hallam’s name only after Phoebe and others told him that Sam was involved.
He said to the police: “I saw a white boy who I mentioned in my last statement, with the baseball bat arrive on his bike. I said in my last interview that I recognised the boy but could not remember his name. Since that interview I have been reminded of his name by Phoebe. As soon as I was reminded of the name, I knew that the boy with the bat was Sam Hallam.”
This was a significant misrepresentation of what he had said before. He had earlier never said he recognised the boy on the bike with the bat, despite being pressed.
At trial he had been described by the judge as being deliberately unhelpful. He said he did not know anyone in the group which surrounded Kassahun. At the time of the initial attack on Colley in Bath Street, one of those fighting had a long baseball bat with a nail sticking out at the end. The bat had come from someone’s trousers. The person with the bat was on the bike. Asked if he knew the person with the bat he said “No.” He repeatedly said he did not know who the person was.
Khelfa identified Sam Hallam in a police identification procedure. When asked in court if that identification was accurate, he said “Obviously, I don’t want to lie in court now.” He added that he only said it was Sam because the attacker was wearing the same clothes as he had seen Sam wearing. Sam was the only white boy he knew. He was not really sure the attacker was Sam. He did not see the attacker’s face properly.
When the case was reviewed by the second appeal court, it was plain that neither identifying witness upon whom reliance was placed in fact provided clear and unequivocal evidence and Khelfa attempted to play down his purported identification as best as he could.
A further difficulty for Sam Hallam at trial was his alibi. When arrested on 20 October he told the police that he had been expecting them because he knew what the girls had been saying. He told the officers he had not been present at the incident but he had been playing football with his friend, Timmy Harrington.
When Timmy Harrington was interviewed by the police he denied that the Appellant had been with him at the time of the incident. At first he said he was working a night shift, but when that turned out not to be true he said he was nevertheless sure that he had not been with the Appellant. He insisted that he had not seen the Appellant at all in the week prior to 13 October. He had not played football that night.
When Sam Hallett was interviewed he had with him two mobile telephones. It transpired that would have been of assistance to him, but on the advice of his legal representative he exercised his right of silence and did not draw attention to them. The reviewing court observed that maintaining his silence was perhaps not in his best interests.
By the time of trial Sam Hallam was aware that Harrington was not supporting his alibi and said if he was not with Harrington he must have been at home babysitting his sister while his mother was at bingo.
There was no forensic scientific evidence that implicated Sam Hallam. Nor was there any evidence from CCTV or phone cell site analysis which placed him at or near the scene of the incident.
A schedule of phone calls was produced to show contact between his co-accused, and it did not include any calls from Sam Hallam. Not one of the other co-accused at trial or in the course of their interviews implicated Sam or suggested that he was present at the incident. In fact, Sam was the only one of those to stand trial who claimed that he was not present.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission had referred the case to the Court of Appeal on a number of different grounds.
Most importantly, heavy reliance was placed on evidence relating to Sam’s two mobile phones. For reasons which escaped the three Appeal Court judges, the phones did not seem to have been interrogated by either the investigating officers or the defence team.
Given the attachment of young and old to their mobile phones, they could not understand why someone from either the investigating team or the defence team did not think to examine the phones attributable to the Appellant.
However, they had now been examined. One provided no results of interest, but the other, a 3G phone purchased by Sam about a week before the incident did. At the time of the murder it was a brand new modern phone.
What the phone evidence did was three things: it put Sam at his grandmother’s house in the afternoon of 11 October; it put him with his father in the George and Vulture public house in the early evening of 11 October; and it put him with Harrington on 12 October.
Although the evidence could not establish a positive alibi, it raised the distinct possibility that both Appellant and his alibi witness were mistaken as to the date they were together. That also indicated that the alibi was not a concoction with an intention to deceive the police.
The Court of Appeal felt that it was always a curious feature of the case that a young man who had allegedly set about establishing a false alibi in the number of days available to him before his arrest did such an appalling job and failed even to get his alibi witness on side before speaking to the police.
Although at first, prosecuting counsel resisted the attempt to overturn Sam Hallam’s conviction, after hearing the evidence on the first morning he announced after the luncheon adjournment that the prosecution was no longer opposing the appeal.
The Court observed that for whatever reasons, be it distress or well-intentioned legal advice, Sam did not help himself in interview, and it seems he did not help himself in the witness box. This was not a case in which either the prosecutor or the trial judge could conclude that there was no evidence against him. There was evidence of his involvement for the jury to consider, whatever criticisms could be made of it.
But the situation had now changed dramatically. The evidence upon which the prosecution relied to support the identifying witnesses, namely the evidence as to false alibi, had been significantly undermined.
The identification evidence in the case was never very satisfactory. Three other accused against whom Phoebe Henville was a key witness were found not guilty. Given the difficulties with Khelfa’s evidence, Harrington’s evidence tipped the balance. The jury must have concluded that the Appellant was at the scene, knew that he had been at the scene when confronted by Phoebe Henville and Sarah Beattie two days later, and tried to lie his way out of trouble. However, any confidence that Sam had lied and/or asked Harrington to concoct a false alibi was misplaced.
The case against Sam Hallam depended on the visual identification evidence of two witnesses, neither of whom said anything in his or her initial statements to the police to indicate that they recognised him (whom they knew), or anyone like him at the scene of the crime.
Phoebe Henville’s identification of the Appellant was prompted by her friend.
Khelfa’s identification of the Appellant was prompted by Phoebe Henville.
Neither was a particularly satisfactory witness. Their various accounts contained numerous internal inconsistences and contradictions and were contradicted by other evidence. Khelfa’s identification evidence provided little, if any, independent support for Pheobe Henville’s evidence.
The new information in relation to Gary Rees raised the possibility of greater collusion between the witnesses than the defence team knew at the time. It also put paid to Miss Henville’s assertion that from the outset there were rumours that Sam Hallam was involved.
Added to all this is that the purported recognition or identification of Sam Hallam took place in very difficult circumstances. It amounted to little more than a fleeting glimpse.
We also know now that there was a real possibility that Sam’s failed alibi was consistent with faulty recollection and dysfunctional lifestyle, and that it was not a deliberate lie.
The cumulative effect of those factors was sufficient to undermine the safety of Sam’s convictions. Accordingly, the safety of the conviction was unsafe, the appeal was allowed and the conviction quashed.
As if it were a Greek tragedy, this case started when a young man named Essayas Kassahun was brutally murdered in a senseless act of gang violence; then in 2010 Sam Hallam’s father committed suicide, apparently no longer able to bear what had happened to his son; and last, but certainly not least, there is Sam Hallam himself who served seven years imprisonment for a conviction which could not possibly be sustained on the evidence.
I cannot part from this episode without conveying grateful thanks to my friend, Glenn Mathieson, for drawing attention to this miscarriage of justice. Glenn was, at the time, a Case Review Manager at the Criminal Law Review Commission, responsible for analysing the evidence so that the case could be brought back before the Court of Appeal enabling Sam Hallam at long last to regain his freedom.
You can listen to this case summary on the Baines Law Podcast Sam Hallam: Miscarriage of Justice which can be accessed on the Podcast Page of this Website at Podcast – Barry Baines