Thomas Green
Thomas Green was convicted of the murder of John O’Neill. A trail of blood led from his body to a nearby community centre that the trial judge found O’Neill had visited the previous evening. He was interviewed 12 times over three days and during these interviews made a number of admissions and signed two written statements. He was found guilty of participating in the murder on the basis of these admissions. On appeal, he argued he had been put under physical and mental pressure by the interviewing officers. New evidence showed interviews were conducted during a period after he suffered from hypoglycaemia. The only interviews in which he implicated himself were these post-episode interviews, meaning any confession evidence was unusable and the conviction was unsafe.
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< Back to Case Search < Back to Overview Graph- Offence: Murder
- Jurisdiction: Northern Ireland
- County: Belfast
- Ethnicity: White
- Gender: M
- Years in prison: 13
- Offence convicted of: Murder
- Year of crime: 1986
- Year of initial conviction: 1987
- Year conviction was overturned: 2002
- Age when imprisoned: 21
- CCRC Referral: Y
- Tried with others: N
- Link to full case: https://www.bailii.org/nie/cases/NICA/2002/14.html
- Type of fresh evidence at appeal: Evidence undermining the reliability of a confession
- Compensation: Unknown
- Crown argued case at CofA: No
- Retrial: No
- Previous appeals: Unsuccessful appeal in 1988, several unsuccessful applications to the Secretary of State.