Jason Moore has spent nearly a decade in prison for murder – and his insistence on his innocence means he may never be released.“Whenever I meet with probation, I refuse to do the courses. I just tell them I’m innocent,” he told the Guardian from HMP Oakwood.
Moore, 53, is convicted of stabbing to death Robert Darby in an east London pub car park in August 2005. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2013 and would soon be eligible for release if he told officials he had committed the crime.
Moore is not the only one protesting his innocence. Among those convinced he is not a murderer are the victim’s family, several retired detectives from the Metropolitan police and a local bishop.
On Wednesday, his supporters will gather outside 10 Downing Street to call for his case to be reconsidered. The protest coincides with plans to submit fresh evidence this week to the body responsible for investigating potential miscarriages of justice.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) looked at Moore’s case in 2021 but refused to return it to the court of appeal.
Tim Darby, the victim’s older brother, said investigations into his brother’s death had been “shambolic” and he was supporting Moore’s campaign because he was convinced of his innocence. “It’s the principle. You don’t bang someone up for doing nothing,” he said.
The bishop of Stepney, Joanne Grenfell, who will be attending the protest, said she was particularly compelled by the fact that both the Darby and Moore families were calling for his release. “They all believe it’s wrong. And that struck me as the most extraordinary coming together,” she added.
She said the families’ struggle to access evidence and to have Moore’s conviction reconsidered “worries me about what that means for justice for all of us”.
Moore, who was a professional gambler with a record for fraud, had no previous convictions for violence. He was tried for murder in 2013 with his co-defendant, Martin Power. A jury found Moore guilty and Power was acquitted of all charges.
After Darby’s death, Moore fled to Spain and lived there, and later in Dubai under a false identity, fearing reprisals. In September 2012, he returned to Britain and presented himself to the police, hoping to clear his name.
Moore acknowledged that Darby, who had been on a four-day cocaine binge before his death, had previously threatened him. Moore has never denied he was in the car park of the Valentine pub in Gants Hill, east London, when the stabbing happened but claimed he was in a vehicle.
The fresh application to the CCRC will include the allegation that the only witness to identify Moore in a line-up says he was drunk at the time and that he could not recall much from the fleeting glance he got.
The witness, who initially picked out a volunteer who looked nothing like Moore, then chose Moore in another identity parade eight years later. He told a journalist at the Romford Recorder: “It was the blink of the eye! I was passing by! How could you remember things like that? And I was drunk!”
The witness said he told police at the time that he was drunk yet this was never disclosed to the court or the defence.
Moore said: “I’ve lain awake many nights always wondering why [the witness] said the things he did … It never ever occurred to me he was drunk because of the time of the day, but suddenly now it all makes sense. The police holding this information back cost me 18 years.”
The only other witness did not pick Moore out of an identity parade and did not say she had seen anyone exiting a car. Yet in its statement of reasons for refusing the case, the CCRC said the two witnesses “agreed” it was the front seat passenger who attacked Derby.
The Moore family say this apparent inaccurate summary of the evidence suggests the CCRC did not properly investigate the case.
Steve Hobbs, a retired Met detective superintendent who led more than 200 murder investigations, has been working on the case largely pro bono for the private detective agency TM Eye.
He produced a 46-page dossier detailing flaws in the evidence against Moore in 2021 that was submitted to the CCRC. The report concluded that the conviction was “completely unsafe” and that the issues raised amounted to a “compelling trend of evidence and intelligence that suggest Jason Moore did not stab Robert Darby”.
Yet Hobbs said he was never even contacted by the CCRC to discuss his investigation before they turned down the case.
Hobbs said: “The CCRC are toothless tigers. They should look at it in far more detail than they have. If they took it seriously why didn’t they give me a call?”
Moore says he distracts himself from the enormity of the prison time still ahead of him by watching sport and playing chess. “I live in hope that one day the nightmare might be over,” he said.
His sister, Kirstie Moore, who has been leading the campaign for his release, described the impact of his conviction on her family. “There’s no Christmas any more, there’s no Easter, there’s no birthdays. It’s all gone. Because none of it for my parents is the same, because effectively he’s gone. It’s soul destroying.”
Mark Bowen, Moore’s solicitor, said his team was finalising an application to the CCRC with further grounds of appeal, believing the fresh evidence pointed to a miscarriage of justice.
A spokesperson for the Met said it had reviewed information about the case in 2021 and met representatives of the Darby family to inform them of its position.
Noting that the CCRC had not referred the case for appeal, the spokesperson added: “This investigation remains closed. Should the circumstances change, we will assess them and consider the most appropriate way to manage any developments in this investigation.”
A spokesperson for the CCRC said a comprehensive review “concluded there was no real possibility that the court of appeal would overturn Mr Moore’s murder conviction”. They invited him to apply again with any new evidence or arguments.
