Day 1: Freshwater Five Appeal
Daniel Payne and Scott Birtwistle outside the Royal Court of Justice, on the first day of the Freshwater Five appeal.
Day 1 of the Freshwater Five appeal hearing has concluded. The five men were convicted on a 11-1 verdict and sentenced to a total of 104 years in prison for smuggling £53m of cocaine in 2011. Jon, Jamie and Zoran are still in prison to this day, and Dan and Scott have not served their sentences and are on licence.
It was sunny this morning when the APPEAL team met with Danny and Scott outside the Royal Courts of Justice ahead of the first day of evidence for the Freshwater Five appeal. Nerves were on edge -Applicants and legal team alike -no one had slept well, cigarette after cigarette was being smoked. Both Dan and Scott remarked how much more nervous they felt standing outside the towering RCJ -how much more real it felt. This is a day all five of the men, who we believe to have been wrongfully convicted, have been waiting more than a decade for.
“I’m not sure how I feel about yet -ask me in two days time. It definitely brings back the feelings and shock of the court case and the conviction. It would be amazing if, in the future, all of us can get back to our loved ones and our lives” Danny Payne, one of the Freshwater Five
THE FIRST DAY OF EVIDENCE
Experts instructed by the men’s legal team (a radar expert, a chief mate and a marine operations co-ordinator, and a ship-based marine electronics engineer) were crossed-examined by the prosecution counsel. The application for leave to appeal against the convictions of Jon and Danny involves new radar evidence, which emerged more than seven years after their trial in 2011. This evidence shows not just that the fishing boat did not get close enough to the containership’s track to pick up any drug packages, but also revealed that a surveillance aircraft overflew the Galwad’s route through Freshwater Bay and failed to see any drugs in the water at the time the police insisted they must be there. That same radar data also showed an alternate suspect vessel speeding to the location at which the drugs were later found an hour later. All this evidence should have been shared with the defence and thus the jury at trial –but was not. As Applicants’ counsel Joel Bennathan QC wrote in his Skeleton Argument:
“The idea of coopering in a very short time in quite high seas reduces from being difficult but conceivable to being simply impossible."
You can read more coverage of the appeal in the Guardian or on the BBC. Do keep listening to the Guardian's Today in Focus podcast, following the case. Episode 5 concluded today and it gives an excellent summary of the case.
We’ll keep you posted on here, and on our blog, each day from court. Keep the support coming on Instagram and Twitter. The Freshwater Five and their families really appreciate it.
Love,
The APPEAL team
