PlayMonday, 3rd September, 8pm ITV
The actor Ray Winstone emulates his ITV drama role as private detective Vincent to investigate claims his nephew's best friend is the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
Sam Hallam has served three years of a life sentence for the murder of Essayas Kassahun, but as Ray discovers, doubts about his conviction have led to a mounting campaign to free him.
Essayas Kassahun, a 21-year-old trainee chef, was killed in October 2004 in a fight in East London, ten years after arriving in the UK from Ethiopia. He died trying to save his friend from attack by a gang of youths, some of whom were believed to be armed with knives and baseball bats.
Around 40 young men from the Hoxton area had gone to neighbouring Whitecross to find Kassahun’s friend, who had angered one of them for ‘staring him down’ while leaving a youth club two days earlier.
A year later, of seven men charged with the murder, two were found guilty, student Bullabeck Ring-Biong, 20, and 18-year-old Sam Hallam, and sentenced to 15 and 12 years respectively.
But, almost three years after he was taken into custody, a campaign against Hallam’s conviction is gathering pace.
In this Tonight report, Ray Winstone, whose nephew is Hallam’s close friend reports on claims that he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
The gang that carried out the attack wore hoods making it difficult for witnesses to identify who was present, but Hallam was convicted after two witnesses claimed they saw him at the scene. Hallam’s alibi that he was playing football with a friend failed to stand up.
But there were no forensics to link him to the crime and no CCTV evidence of him even being in the area. And despite two people placing Hallam at the murder, many others who saw the fight told the police that he wasn’t present, but they weren’t all called at the trial to give evidence.
Since then more new witnesses have come forward to say they saw the murder and that Hallam was not there. After being told by his nephew Bobby that Hallam was innocent, Ray was initially sceptical, but decided to find out more.
In the programme, Ray re-visits the scene of the murder, researches CCTV images showing movements of the gang in the lead up to the attack, and meets witnesses to the fight including two boys who were acquitted of the murder and claim Hallam was not there.
He also talks to campaigners and Hallam’s family about their fight to free him. And he investigates the focus of the prosecution case, which relied on the word of two young people who said Hallam was there.
The first witness was a friend of the victim, aged 17 at the time, who said she’d seen a black man hit him with a baseball bat. Immediately after the incident she told the police the names of four people she said were involved, but did not mention Hallam, who is white.
It was only after subsequently hearing a rumour someone called Sam was involved in the fight and after seeing him in the street two days later that she made a statement to the police that she recognised him as someone she saw walking away from the fight.
The second witness to name Sam was also a friend of the victim. In his first interview he described a white boy on a BMX bike who pulled out a baseball bat with a protruding screw.
He said he couldn’t see the boy’s face because of the hood of a Gap top he was wearing, which was pulled tightly round his face. He said all he knew was the boy had blondish hair. But days later he spoke to the female witness who told him that Sam Hallam was the boy at the fight.
He then made a second statement to the police identifying the boy on the bike as Sam Hallam. However, in court he tried to go back on his second statement.
Hallam’s defence barrister Robert Fortune tells Tonight: “If the two people who were there can’t say they were sure it was Sam Hallam, how can a jury?”
Paul May, who has worked on many successful ‘miscarriage of justice’ campaigns including the Birmingham Six and the Bridgewater Four, is now leading the fight against Hallam’s conviction.
He tells Tonight: “This is a very young person who, in our belief is entirely innocent, who’s serving life imprisonment. It’s completely wrong that the inconsistent testimony of two witnesses, which is riddled with anomalies and discrepancies, should be the basis on which this young man is serving life imprisonment.
“So, a number of us got involved because we very strongly feel that a miscarriage of justice has taken place and that um Sam Hallam should be freed from prison.”
Sam’s family had hoped that Sam’s conviction would be overturned when his case was heard by the court of appeal earlier this year. But the appeal upheld the conviction.
Ray tells the programme: “Sam has now been in Aylesbury Young Offenders Institute for three years. His family all miss him terribly including his 11 year old sister Daisy. It’s hard to be certain exactly what happened on the night of 11th October 2004. All we know is that a stupid teenage fight over nothing has destroyed three young people’s lives.
“The needless and shameful death of Essayas Kassahun, Bullabeck Ring-Biong found guilty of murder, and Sam Hallam, a young man who many now believe is innocent, serving life for an offence they say he didn’t commit."
Editor: Mike Lewis
Deputy editors: Simon Phillips and Julie Shaw
