Andrew Adams loses battle for compensation

Nov 27 2009 By Matt McKenzie

FORMER aircraft engineer Andrew Adams who spent 14 years in jail before his murder conviction was ruled unsafe lost his battle for more than £1m compensation at the Court of Appeal today.

But the judges involved in the case agreed to hold a further hearing next week to give Andrew Adams’s lawyers the chance to apply to take the case to the Supreme Court.

Mr Adams was convicted at Newcastle Crown Court and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1993 and the conviction quashed by the criminal division of the appeal court in 2007 after a referral by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

His appeal was allowed then on the basis of inadequacies in the conduct of his trial by his then legal team, which had failed to use three pieces of evidence made available by the prosecution for his trial.

Tim Owen QC, representing Mr Adams at the civil appeal hearing last month, told the three judges: ``The appellant cannot be blamed for the incompetence of the legal preparation for his trial."

Dismissing his appeal, Lord Justice Dyson said even if Mr Adams was deprived of a fair trial, there was no evidence of a miscarriage of justice that would allow him compensation.

The judge said the conviction was not quashed on the ground that he had not had a fair trial, the verdict was ruled unsafe because the evidence that was not used was important and might have led the jury to acquit.

Mr Adams, from Newcastle, was 23 when he was found guilty of the shooting of retired science teacher Jack Royal.