TWO prisoners fighting convictions for their part in robberies at Little Chef restaurants have been denied legal aid for a judicial review of their case. Robert McEwen and Eon Kennedy, both currently languishing in Risley Prison in Cheshire, were told this week that their application for financial assistance to argue their case had been turned down by the Legal Aid Board. The pair have been devastated by the news which comes on the end of a long line of disappointments for them.
Speaking from his cell McEwen said: "We are very annoyed about this because we have a good case and we stood a chance of winning. Where we can go from here I don't know - we will have to discuss it with our solicitor."
McEwen, who spent six weeks on the run to publicise the pair's fight for justice, is determined to fight on.
"If we make it into court what we have to say would show a lot of people in a bad light that is why we are being kept out of court by the officials and the Police Complaints Authority and others," he complained.
"We were promised all sorts of things after our convictions and we were advised to keep quiet. That has got us nowhere and when I get out in 12 months time I'm going to make sure that everybody knows what happened."
The pair have amassed an impressive array of facts to argue their case including:
confirmation from a judge that the police breached PACE regulations
claims that their fingerprints were not found at the scene of the crime
the fact that McEwen was not picked out of any identification parades
the main prosecution witness failed to notice a two-inch scar on Kennedy's face and:
the recent 'discovery' of a vital police accident report hitherto lost or unavailable.
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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