On 30 March 2004, I was sentenced to life in prison for a crime I did not commit. As I was being led to the cells, I told the courtroom, loudly: “I am completely innocent.” But no one listened, and to borrow a quote from Robinson Crusoe, one of my favourite childhood books, I found myself “cast upon a horrible, desolate island”: the English prison system.
I emerged from that system after spending more than 17 years behind bars, having finally been granted the parole that had been denied many times before because I had continued to protest my innocence. It took a further two and a half years of fighting before, at last, I was able to stand outside the Royal Courts of Justice a free, exonerated man.
