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In the Crown Court in Liverpool, on 16 December 1981, Raymond Gilbert was found guilty of murder and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He is still in prison twenty-one years later, and it seems not unlikely that he will eventually die in prison in old age.
Why? Because he will not admit his guilt. Without that admission, for all practical purposes the Home Office parole machinery does not start to operate.
He was convicted of a brutal murder: the stabbing to death, early one morning, of a Liverpool bookmaker, John Suffield. Suffield was murdered in his own betting shop on 13 March 1981 in the course of what looked like a robbery that went wrong. Gilbert, then aged 22, was a mixed-race youth, badly educated, with a speech impediment. He had a record of petty crime in Liverpool and was probably a likely suspect from a police point of view. But evidence? He was not picked out on an identification parade; no fingerprint or blood samples - and there was plenty of blood - connected to the crime. The murder weapon was never found. In short there was no evidence of any kind against Gilbert. To start with he even had an alibi. He said that he was with his girlfriend in her flat, having arrived there after a drinking session at about 2am. Until she was herself threatened with prosecution, the girlfriend supported his story and said that he had been with her on the fatal morning. Intimidated, she changed her story.
Lacking evidence, why was the prosecution brought? Because, after two days and two nights in police custody, with no independent person present, Gilbert signed a confession. Today, such a confession, produced under such circumstances, would never have led to a prosecution at all. Why did he make such a confession? A distinguished psychologist, Olive Tunstall, says that “In my opinion there is evidence to suggest that the confession Mr Gilbert made during the police interviews may have been unreliable. I have based my opinion on the following grounds… Mr Gilbert’s personal vulnerability at the time, and his youth, limited education, abnormal personality, stammer … and a profound fear of being physically assaulted emanating from early childhood experiences.”
Things were different in 1981. However, by now a coach and horses had been driven through the confession by the Court of Appeal. Gilbert, in his confession, falsely implicated an associate, John Kamara, as a partner in the robbery. Kamara as a result spent twenty years in prison until the Court of Appeal overturned his conviction two years ago. In effect the Court of Appeal said, though they did not draw this conclusion, that a significant part of Gilbert’s written confession was untrue. But they were not hearing an appeal from Gilbert, so conclusions about the validity of his confession were not drawn.
There were however other inconsistencies in the confession. A significant point was raised by a juror but waved aside by the judge. The juror wanted to know how it could be that a bottle of milk and a newspaper had been placed on a shelf within the shop. Gilbert’s confession said that he and Kamara had forced the unfortunate Suffield into his shop at knifepoint after a struggle. Suffield had certainly collected his usual bottle of milk from a nearby shop. It should have been realised that it would have been impossible for the victim to have been manhandled at knifepoint by two thugs and to have managed to hold onto his milk bottle and put it safely inside the shop. The judge should certainly have explored the point, rightly raised by the juror. All he could say was “It is so difficult to understand why it matters”. It did matter. There had been a row in the bookmaker’s shop the day before and an aggrieved punter poker online had threatened to come back the next day to sort the bookmaker out. No one seems to have thought it possible that someone could be lurking in the shop, already there when the bookmaker arrived with his bottle of milk.
Such issues were probably not raised because Gilbert, in the middle of the trial, suddenly changed his plea to “Guilty”. Indeed, in 1982, while in prison, after conviction, he made a similar admission, but this time exonerated Kamara and named someone else as his partner. His explanation of this change of plea - which effectively signed his life away - has consistently been that he was threatened while on remand and after conviction, by other casino online prisoners who were friends of Kamara and wanted to get Kamara off. It is an explanation that might have been looked at by someone. Once freed of the company of Kamara’s friends, having been moved to another prison, Gilbert repudiated his previous position and for twenty years has maintained his innocence.
So far Gilbert’s claims have not even reached the Court of Appeal. The Criminal Cases Review Commission has far closed that door for now. In their ruling of 2000, the milk bottle does not even get a mention. The police are above suspicion. “The Commission is of the opinion that it is unlikely that the police gave Gilbert these details”. These were details of the murder not made public in newspaper accounts but appearing as part of his written confession. The psychologist’s evidence is discounted. Much is made by the CCRC of the fact that Gilbert did not say at the time of the trial that he was under threat. This ignores the new, psychological evidence. How many men with his characteristics of fear and naivety would name those who were threatening physical violence if they thought that there was a high probability that they would be returned to the same prison?
Innocent or guilty, and only God knows, Gilbert has done five years more than his minimum sentence of fifteen years. He writes endlessly to anyone who might possibly be persuaded to listen. There is a trunk full of such pleading letters and the various forms of brush-off they have received. A less determined man would by now have caved in, admitted guilt, and taken the only road that looked as if it might lead to freedom. Surely it is time now to say that enough is enough, and that he should be prepared for release, whether he admits guilt or not.
February 2002 1072 words
More on Ray: http://www.j12.org/ps/gilbert.htm
Write to Raymond at:
Raymond Gilbert H10111, HMP Grendon, Grendon Underwood, Aylesbury, Bucks HP18 OTL