Anthony Patrick Nolan wrongly jailed in 1998 died in prison December 2009

Source: Issued by MOJUK
31st December 2009

Anthony had always protested his innocence and kept fighting over the years, he was found dead in his cell just three days before Christmas. The press release (below) from the Ministry of Justice is bland and does not tally with the phone calls MOJUK has had from prisoners in HMP Kingston, who more than suspect that prison negligence, contributed to Anthony’s death.

Anthony felt strongly that the British Justice system had failed him, he wrote in 2003, “One explanation may be the fact that I am of Irish origin and we know how the Irish community have in the past suffered at the hands of British injustice.”

We do not know if or where/when the funeral will take place as we do not have any contacts for Anthony’s family/friends.

Hopefully the prisoners in HMP Kingston will peace together, what happened in the preceding hours/days before his death and will let those outside know the truth.

John O for MOJUK

Ministry of Justice Press Release

HMP Kingston prisoner Anthony Patrick Nolan (DOB 23/08/1960) was discovered in his cell at 8.15am on Tuesday 22 December. Prison staff tried to resuscitate Mr Nolan, but he was pronounced dead at 11.14am. The cause of death is not yet known.

As with all deaths in custody, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will conduct an investigation.

MOJUK reproduced below Anthony’s original statement, a longer revised version can be accessed @ http://www.mojuk.org.uk/nolan.html

I am Anthony Nolan aged 42. On the 4 July 1998, I was arrested and subsequently charged with murder. I was alleged to have shot and killed a Patrick Delaney in Kentish Town, London.Mr Delaney was shot and killed in broad daylight which was witnessed by several people.

At police interviews, I responded to all questions with “no comment.” and made no statement. At the time of the murder, I was with my mother in her house which was close to the killing of Delaney.

Following my arrest, I later agreed to attend an identification parade, I had nothing to hide and didn’t believe that it was me who could be selected as the person responsible.

Whilst I knew Mr Delaney, I also knew the person whom Mr Delaney was with at the time. This other person a Gideon Tsagne was to tell the police that it was me who was responsible for the murder.

However, at the time of my arrest, I didn’t know those details.

At the identification parade, two witnesses who saw the whole series of events did not select me as the person responsible.

Another person, an elderly woman aged 70 having walked along the parade, approached the officer in charge and said “the best I could say is near number seven” which was the position I was stood in. The officer did not ask her to clarify that but merely turned and said, “the witness has made a positive identification of number seven.”

I was dumfounded. Mr Tasagne did not attend the parade.

Later, whilst I was on remand in Belmarsh prison, Mr Tsagne was himself shot and killed. Police evidence was that it was with the same gun that had been used to shoot and kill Mr Delaney.

At my trial, Mr Tsagne’s statement was read out in court although my defence team sought to have it excluded.

The elderly woman who was called to give evidence had difficulty in as much as seeing me in the dock, never mind seeing the lawyers closest to her but went on to point me out as the person she allegedly saw shoot and kill Mr Delaney. Things might have seemed to have improved when evidence was given that this woman had originally told police that she had only seen the back of the gunman as he made his escape, that she hadn’t seen his face.

What on earth were the police thinking in allowing such a person, given what she had told them to allow her to attend an identification parade unless she was to try and identify the face of the alleged killer on the basis of the killer’s back which is illogical and nonsense.

This ought to have been fully exploited by counsel and indeed to have sought to have her excluded from giving evidence as what she was saying was such a contradiction of her earlier description that the judge himself ought to have excluded her evidence and at the least warned the jury in no uncertain terms to be cautious. He did neither.

I was later convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment and given a tariff of 20 years.

There was no forensic evidence against me, no admissions by me and no statements from me.

The BBC’s Rough Justice took up my case and instructed a QC who prepared grounds of appeal and indeed later argued them at the Court of Appeal.

The appeal hinged on the way the identification parade was conducted and the breaches of PACE which should have allowed my solicitor and myself to have been informed of the limit of the elderly woman’s identification evidence.

Something was clearly wrong that one minute she only saw the back of the killer, then goes on to say “near number seven” at that parade which again is not an identification. The procedures under PACE were clearly flawed but the Court of Appeal rejected my appeal. They did however allow leave to take the appeal to the House of Lords on a point of law which their Appeal’s Committee later rejected without giving any reason as to their decision.

Interestingly, the judges at the Court of Appeal stated that on the question of whether I had had a fair trial or my counsel were incompetent were issues they were not prepared to give a decision on. My counsel had argued that I had not received a fair trial. This is a remarkable statement to make, for is not the function of judges one of making decisions?

Unfortunately, my QC did not I believe argue as he should have done on the issues of a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights but confined his arguments about the identification parade and PACE.

Rough Justice were to drop me after my appeal, no doubt because my case no longer had any interest for them, the appeal had failed and the killer of Tsagne was still on the loose and I remained convicted of Delaney’s murder.

Whilst in prison, my mother died and here again I have had problems, this time from the Prison Service who in granting me permission to attend the mass and later hr funeral led me through the procedures so late on the day that there was no realistic chance of me attending either. Having been put in a taxi with 2 prison officers, I was left waiting at the exit from the prison for almost an hour. The funeral was being held just 5 miles away. Now I knew that I would miss the funeral and even if I did go, it would all be over with and my family would have left This was tantamount to refusing me my wish to attend the funeral.

I have been accused by prison psychologists in a report of “acting the victim,” which I find insulting and offensive and disregards the mourning and grieving process. Such people are a disgrace but then I am aware that they are theory bound and practice a science fiction no doubt because they couldn’t make it in the real sciences of the caring profession like medicine. Everything they do is theory and guesswork and they have become the so called ‘experts’ on how people think and act, although they are short on ideas on how people feel.

My fight continues and now I am in the process of lodging an application under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights at the ECHR, that my right to a fair trial was violated.My submission will only be on Article 6, though several of my rights under ECHR have been violated.

The British Justice system has failed me in its quest for a conviction. Since my conviction the BBC have run a feature on unsolved murders which included Gideon Tsagne, the witness shot and killed whilst I was in prison.

His murder has been attributed amongst other things to drugs and Yardies both of which I have no history of being associated with.

One explanation may be the fact that I am of Irish origin and we know how the Irish community have in the past suffered at the hands of British injustice.

In Struggle,
Anthony Nolan
HMP Kingston, Monday 3rd February 2003