Mm.

This interview is being tape recorded or in an interview room.

One Hackney police station.

The first of December.

This is the actual police recording of Oliver Campbell's confession.

19 minutes that changed everything.

How long before the actual shooting that had you hired the gun come a couple of weeks old?

Couple of months.

Mhm.

Oliver Campbell is a 19 year old with a learning disability.

He's accused of shooting a London shopkeeper dead in a robbery.

Gone wrong, he seems confused.

Can you describe the gun to me?

Not exactly black and I can't done it yourself.

Small one.

His lawyers say this confession was crucial at his trial.

Convicted of murder, he spent 11 years in prison for a crime he says he didn't commit.

Mhm.

I was put under pressure.

Start to say things.

I don't want to say it.

It was unfair.

Totally out.

There is abuse of the police.

Can't prove this, but it's a strong suspicion that the police deliberately arranged matters so that they could conduct an interview in the absence of a solicitor.

Yeah, it was.

Then they grabbed the shopkeeper and shot him in the head.

He died on his way to hospital.

One of the government dropped.

On the 22nd of July 1992 men entered a shop in east London intent on robbery.

The owner, builder of handle, pressed the panic alarm.

One of the men pulled a gun and shot him at close range in the head.

Local man Oliver Campbell was a suspect.

His distinctive cap was found near the crime scene.

The man who shot the unfortunate Mr 100 dead was wearing a hat, which Oliver had bought only a week before the police when they realized that jump to the conclusion that he must have been the shooter is a simple conclusion.

Oliver Campbell later said the cap had been stolen and hairs recovered inside was shown not to be his.

I know I didn't commit the crime trying to put other charges against Man.

I know if I was guilty, I'm not guilty of nothing.

And then they The prosecution relies on three main strands of evidence.

Apart from the confession, an eyewitness picked him out at an ID parade at the second attempt, he was friends with a man accused of the robbery, and his hat was found near the crime scene.

Campbell was convicted of the murder in 1991 losing an appeal Three years later.

In 2002, he completed his sentence.

He's always maintained his innocence.

18 years ago, the BBC's rough justice program raised serious questions about the conviction.

They demonstrated there was no forensic evidence linking over Campbell to the crime scene.

They discovered one of the robbers had told the police Campbell was not involved.

A fact never revealed the jury.

It had been ruled inadmissible, and they focused on Campbell's confession, obtained without a solicitor present.

His lawyers applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to try to get the case.

Referred back to the court of appeal.

The CCRC refused, arguing all the issues have been examined by a jury and the court of appeal.

I think they saw a lot of the individual trees.

They saw the smoke and the elm and the ash and the pine, but they failed to see the wood.

They failed to see that all of that added up to a powerful case that there had been a miscarriage of justice.

Why did you say those things?

Some of the police interview tactics were later described by an independent psychologist as highly manipulative and relentless.

This line of questioning lasted almost three minutes.

There are fingerprints on the can in the shop.

There are hairs in the hat that was found nearby.

People did see you there.

We traced the senior officer who led the interviews at Hackney police Station.

He told us the interviews with Oliver Campbell were tape recorded and conducted in accordance with the codes of practice issued under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, which applied at that time today.

His interviews would never be heard by a jury because of the unfairness of the police questioning, because I don't think that the prosecution could prove that he understood the implications of being interviewed without a solicitor.

It's the current law, unfair treatment that counts for any appeal.

But even in 1990 vulnerable suspects had to be interviewed with what's known as an appropriate adult to protect their interests.

There was no appropriate adult at his first interview at Plast, a police station in which he said he was at the shop on the night of the robbery and he waived his right to a solicitor.

But in the interviews that followed at Hackney Police Station, conducted by two other detectives, an appropriate adult and a solicitor were there.

The key confession came on the evening of the first of December 1990 that changed everything.

An appropriate adult from social services have been attending police interviews earlier that day alongside an experienced and tough defense minister called Arthur Mallinger.

This is the first time he's spoken about what happened that night.

The police did not have anything like sufficient evidence, probably even to I think they get a prosecution off the ground and conviction without something more, Um, and the more was going to be a confession.

Oliver Campbell sustained a brain injury as a baby.

Mr Mulliner says it was clear that his client would struggle to cope with complex questions.

He was inconsistent with what he told me, and I was his lawyer, such that I I felt I didn't think I could rely upon what he was telling me.

Let him just discuss it with the police in that way.

Our thermal injure left Hackney police station at about 6:30 p.m. He says the police told him they had no plan for further interviews that night and had agreed to call him back.

If that changed.

The police say, Campbell suddenly decided to continue because he wanted to tell the truth.

The officers should have telephoned me and said, I think Oliver wants to speak to me.

Will you come over to be part of the interview?

And I would have said Yes, of course I have asked him.

He's got an appropriate adult from social services.

There are not what we can do about that.

And we would have had the interview.

I don't know how the interview would have panned out, but it would have been undoubtedly a fair interview.

Oliver Campbell told the police he was happy to go ahead without a solicitor.

Back in 1998 Hackney Police Station, Oliver Campbell's solicitor and the appropriate adult from social services, had left for the evening.

The police decided to get his foster mother in my understanding of why I was there was just to be a support for him and, you know, uh, just support him in any way that I could.

She agreed to become the appropriate adult, and they rolled the tape again time by My watch now is eight.

38 p.

M.

This is interview 11.

His confession to the police.

Oh, do not pull the trigger, Baxter.

Sorry, could you say that again?

I set up for that.

I was the one like Putin that got on there, not showing.

Oh, I was put under pressure after savings.

I didn't want to say it, and that's it.

That's how I felt.

I felt like in a sardine can.

It's like you've got sardine.

Can you try and get out of them thinking, Oh, why am I being, um, put under pressure to mix the sound?

What?

I don't do it.

And I felt scared at the time.

Mhm.

When his foster mother heard him confess to murder, she was physically sick.

Are you happy to carry on?

You don't think you can carry on?

Um, we'll stop the interviewing.

The confession statement was already on tape.

It felt as as though I was in a trance, uh, a shock.

I'd never been in any situation that made me feel so utterly devastated.

Oliver Campbell's foster mother was magistrate, but this was a very personal story.

And she says she didn't understand the significance of being his appropriate adult and it was not adequately explained, she said at the time.

She felt manipulated by the police.

I have a very strong suspicion that they deliberately arranged the interview in the absence of a sort of because during the interview, all of us, Mr Mullins, who was very able and very experienced, was protesting about the unfairness of some of the questioning, and I think they realize this is I can't prove this, but it's a strong suspicion.

I think they realized that they were never going to get an admission from him if a solicitor was present, they will deny that, and I suppose it's impossible to prove they would deny it.

And it's fair to say that the judge who heard conducted a hearing the trial judge conducted the hearing about whether to admit that statement, declared it admissible and said that there had been no impropriety by the police.

But I don't believe that defense counsel brought up any of the to my mind, very obvious points that could be made about the unfairness of the police conduct.

Do you think you were misled?

I was Mr Oh, yeah, of course, Of course, I was misled.

Even if we take the what the officer said that he never promised to bring me, I'm mistaken well, but the questions that arises, why didn't he bring me?

Why did you bring?

The senior police officer who conducted the key confession interview told us he suspects Mr Campbell is in denial of murder, adding, when he was interviewed by me, he had the assistance of a sinister or an appropriate adult to look after him.

It is correct.

He did not have a solicitor present when he confessed, however, his appropriate adult was present throughout, and he had waived his right to have his sinister.

His interview tape recordings were played at his trial, and the jury had ample opportunity to consider whether or not his confession was genuine.

And this was not the only evidence which incriminated him.

The CCRC is reviewing the case for the second time now.

Oliver Campbell's lawyers say there are many points of unfairness, but perhaps the most powerful argument concerns his confession.

Oliver is mentally very challenged, and during those interviews the police behaved, I think, very unfairly the law and practice in regard to the way that mentally challenged suspects and defendants are treated has changed very considerably in their favor.

Oh, Oliver Campbell, who's out on licence living in sheltered accommodation, has plans if his conviction is quashed.

Once my name is cleared, I'm not trying to say, Look, I'm gon I'm not getting out of the country because what's happened to me?

It's buggered up my life.

A former commissioner who spent five years that the CCRC told us his case should be referred back to the appeal court when you break it down and this, I think, is my fundamental concern about the case.

Each of the elements that led to the conviction have a weakness about them.

So if this case had come across your desk when you were in the Criminal Cases Review Commission, do you think you would have been minded to refer this?

I would have been arguing strongly for referral.

I think that modern standards of fairness need to be considered in the context of the confession evidence in particular.

Uh huh.

So the CCRC will shortly decide whether to refer this case back to the Court of appeal and how modern standards of confession evidence apply to what many believe is a troubling case from the past.

Richard Watson with our exclusive report while News Night contacted the family of the murder victim Baldev Handle.

But they didn't wish to take part in this film or to comment.

We also asked the Metropolitan Police about this case.

A spokeswoman said the case was fully investigated at the time, with a range of evidence brought before a jury who convicted the defendant in 1991.

We are aware this matters with the Criminal Cases Review Commission and therefore it would not be appropriate to comment further at this stage.