Freelance Reporting and Future Reform

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We are interviewing six brilliant journalists about the stories that have got them shortlisted for a pool foot award this year. Let's see who's in at number five. Page ninety-four. The Private Eye Podcast. My name's Adam Bahovsky. I'm a freelance journalist, and my stories were published in the lead and the big issue. And what is the story that's brought you to the Paul Foot Award this year? So the story that's brought me to the Portfoot Awards um tried to answer the question of what happens when the state wrongly punishes you? What does it ultimately owe you? And I told the stories of of three people who had been wrongly convicted of a of a crime and then were deprived of their liberty for many years. And after all that, a uh very long battle to to to overturn their convictions, they were told that they weren't eligible for any compensation for the government. How did you first find out about this? So I was looking into this in 2024 when the post office scandal was dominating the headlines, and like many people, I want to still understand how was it that post office scandal victims were struggling so much to get compensation? And I was surprised to find that the government had for decades administered a compensation scheme. And so that made me question why was did it have to kind of create bespoke compensation schemes just for the post office scandal victims. And so I sent a freedom of information request to the uh Ministry of Justice asking them how many post office scandal victims had applied for compensation through this scheme and how many had been successful. And they told me that a handful had applied and all of them had been rejected through this scheme. And then that's when kind of alarm bell started ringing. I was like if this scheme is even rejecting post office scandal victims, then there must be uh many, many others. And then when I dug into the the statistics, I found that um at that time, at that moment, only six percent of people were actually being compensated of those who of the hundreds that were applying for compensation through this scheme. What are some of the reasons that you might get compensation through this scheme? Well, you see, this is the this is the thing. Under international law, if you've been wrongly convicted of a crime and then, you know, a fresh piecece of eviden is uncovered that leads to that conviction being overturned, you should be awarded compensation. That's what international law says. And that is largely how it had worked in the UK for a long time until twenty fourteen, in which the government decides to make this change to its statutory compensation scheme. And so from twenty fourteen onwards, it wasn't simply enough that you had to uncover a new piece of evidence that undermines the original evidence that led to your conviction, you now have to prove that you were innocent beyond reasonable doubt. And that's a big change because it essentially reverses the burden of proof in the in in the criminal justice system. So you know for the state to punish you, it has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you're guilty. And now the state was asking people who had been wrongly convicted and had overturned So this is not to do with overturning your conviction, this is to do with getting compensation that you have to prove that you're innocent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So these people have already jumped have uh done a a huge hurdle to even get to the stage in which they had overturned their convictions, which is a thing that not many people manage to do if new evidence comes to light that undermines their c their conviction. So to to have gotten to this point and then be told, well actually we need even more evidence to before deciding is hu is it's kind of So why is that being treated as a separate matter? Surely if your conviction's been overturned then you are legally no longer guilty of that crime. So why is that different? Well , it's a naughty it's a a naughty legal debate, essentially. And the actual effect of the government deciding to tighten or to to kind of change the goalposts in this way meant that it would it it became virtually impossible for anyone who has to have their conviction overturned to get compensation. I mean lawyer when I spoke to lawyers they said that short of you know the the real perpetrator actually coming forward and saying, Look, I did it, it's almost imp almost impossible for for somebody to actually prove them themselves to be innocent beyond reasonable doubt. This incredibly high standard to meet. Yeah, so one of the first people I spoke to was uh Ahmed Adan uh and his father Mohammed. Ahmed was seventeen when he was wrongly accused of a sexual assault. And he was was found guilty by a jury. In the process it was found that he had undiagnosed schizophrenia, so he was given a hospital order rather than a prison sentence. He spent essentially thirteen years under this hospital order before he was releas ed. And when he was released, his dad, who knew he couldn't have possibly done the crime he'd been convicted for, wrote to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to ask them to review the case. Now, the Criminal Cases Review Commission is an independent body that um investigates potential miscarriages of justice. It's a public body. And they took on his case and they looked again at evidence at the center of the case, a mobile phone that had been dropped by the perpetrator at the scene. And uh astonishingly, there was none of Ahmed's DNA was found on that phone. And now with new DNA testing, they were able to find a match uh on that phone that was found at the crime scene, and it pointed to a completely different man, a man who um had uh a history of sexual a sexual offence on Tooting Common in London where the crime had uh been committed. So all the signs point pointed to uh a different person. The case then went to the Court of Appeal, Ahmed's k the conviction was quashed. And so you know you'd you'd think from that point onwards, and certainly Ahmed and his father did that it would be in a sort of an easy road to to get compensation. But he was refused compensation by the government by the Ministry of Justice . And unusually, I think it kind of speaks to how determined Ahmed's family uh was about this, they decided to challenge this at the High Court. And you know, lawyers argued that this new DNA ev evidence completely demolished the case against Ahmed, and judges seem to be inclined to agree, you know, um th they said that it seemed this evidence seemed to point to an entirely different perpetrator, but nevertheless with, regret , they said they would have to uh uphold the refusal for compensation. And that's because of that law change in 2014, essentially, that makes it all but impossible, sets an impossible bar of having to Is this a money saving measure? Is this austerity? I think it does come at that time. But you know, even at at that point in twenty fourteen, uh if you read back the debate that MPs are having in Parliament over this being brought in, people are warning even then about the potential for uh people who uh you know were wrongly accused of crimes, being denied compensation and you know they've you know been proven right largely by that. One of the really shocking things about this story is that this is people's lives being ruined in the long term. This is people spending nearly a decade and a half in prison for a crime they didn't commit and then not receiving compensation for it. I mean it is shocking. Yes, I think I think we know that that hundreds of of people who who have applied for for compensation Can you only apply once your conviction's been overturned? That's right. Well yes, yes. I mean you can technically apply without that, but you wouldn't get very far. Right. So what you're saying is that there may well be hundreds of people whose convictions have been overturned uh and whose lives have been turned upside down but who have been told they won't be able to get compensation. Yes, and I and it has like a d an absolutely devastating impact on people's lives. Um because it it takes so you know, the three people that I spoke to who had who had managed to overturn their their conviction but were refused, the the actual process from leaving prison to um to to having your conviction quashed is is almost as agonizing as actually being in prison for some people. Uh Gareth Jones, a care worker who I uh spoke to who had been wrongly accused of a of of a sex crime . He uh he talks about leaving prison and coming back to his small town in Wales and you know, going back to the pub, his local and, you know just the conversation stopping . People he recalled people shouting at abuse at him in the street. At one point he was actually punched in the street. And you know, all of that took a huge toll on him. You know, he he said to me that those intervening years before And you know, now you know at least he has the fact that his conviction's been overturned, but this missing piece of the puzzle, uh being awarded compensation, I think it's almost as important for its symbolic value as for its monetary value, you know. Uh Gareth told me that, you know, he never once was was told sorry by anybody, you know, for for for the time that he he lost. And I think the compensation is as closest it really comes, I think, to having some recognition that the state has How long did Gareth spend in prison? Gareth was in prison for three years. He has a learning disability and you know he told me that there was nothing really no accommodation was really made for that. He he tells me that he still kind of suff ers with the trauma uh as a result of that. Another uh victim that I interviewed, Gregosh all, he actually d told me that he developed PTSD um in in uh prison. Uh he was wrongly accused of murder and was given a life sentence and he in his case he almost spent 17 years in jail just after the birth of his daughter. So he could But he did spend seventeen years in prison. No, he thankful he thankfully got out after four and a half. But you know the the justice system moves so slowly that um you know he spent four and a half years in you know one of the toughest prisons in in England and you developed PTSD in that time and he came out and he told me that he st suffered from the fear that the the real perpetrator was still out there. The real perpetrator he says that had been sending texts to uh his partner. Uh so he was terrified. Uh he said that he couldn't go outside without looking over his shoulder the whole time. Um you started reporting this story as a freelancer, not attached to any particular publication. What was that like? It was really challenging. Um I mean financially it was very difficult because it's you know this I was been been working on this for two years and then I mean that in of itself is a very long time a very long time for a freelancer to work on a story. Uh I was lucky enough that I was able to get a grant to do some of the work that covered some of the work. But I think other than that, I think, yeah, I I think not really having an editor to kind of bounce an idea off not having uh other colleagues to talk to about a story can be really tough. I also f found it a bit of a struggle sometimes to get people to to take me seriously. Because I mean you're I mean without as a freelancer you're kind of just a guy with a Gmail. Um you're not, you know it's difficult to kind of ring people up and say, you know, I'm I'm a freelance journalist, tell me about the one of the darkest moments in your life. You can't even tell them necessarily where you'll know that the story will be published. So it takes a lot to convince people to talk to you as a freelan I hope so. I hope so. I think change is slow and you know it if when you look at the the post office scandal, it it took you know campaigning over so many years to get to the stage where um the victims were awarded compensation. I think you know part of the reason I wanted to write this story was you know the the government had acknowledged that something had gone wrong here, but sort of the underlying system that hadn't been working in terms of providing compensation still remained in place. And so that system , uh, in order to fix it, I think it needs more voices to come forward, I think, and she's really difficult . I think you need a chorus of voices really saying like, look, this is what what what it's doing. And it and and it's tough when all these victims are you know individuals.