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I Will Endure
One summer’s night in a squat in south London an argument and fight broke out among a number of young people, one of whom, 18-year-old Mark Balcombe, was viciously beaten and was forced into a bath where he was partly strangled with wire before being stabbed to death.
Those in the flat, most of them drug users, were Kevin O’Neill from Paisley in Scotland; Kevin’s girlfriend Christine, David Hulse, Joanne Huff and Mark Balcombe; Christoph McKuch and Laurent Dhainult from France, and Gillian Dalcos from South Africa. Some of them had previously been living on the streets and living off their wits and been in trouble with the law.
Most had come to resent the way Mark Balcombe and David Hulse were mistreating the squat and before going out for the day told them to pack their bags and leave. When they and another youth, John Beveridge, returned that evening Balcolmbe and Hulse were still there. A fight broke out and Beveridge and Kevin O’Neill were involved in a punch-up with Balcombe. The two Frenchmen tackled David Hulse who jumped from the balcony and fled.
What happened next is in dispute.
According to Kevin O’Neill he withdrew from the assault in the kitchen because he could see that things were going too far. In court, evidence was heard that Christoph McKuch and Laurent Dhainult had blood on their clothes when they were arrested three days later. Furthermore, a witness said that McKuch told him, “John Beveridge made me do it.”
Kevin O’Neill and the others panicked and scattered. Kevin was picked up drunk two days later in the early hours in a café and was taken to a police station in Carter Street. There, he was questioned without a solicitor and signed an incriminating statement about having played a role in the false imprisonment and assault on Balcombe. His lawyer and supporters say that the language in this statement is alien to the way Kevin would have attempted to express himself (he is dyslexic and suffers from severe learning difficulties).
He appeared in court with the two Frenchmen charged with murder. McKuch and Dhainult, during their questioning in the station and later, during the trial, were supported by the French consulate and had full legal representation and translators. The prosecution case was that Kevin and McKuch had stabbed Balcombe. McKuch and Dhainult said that Kevin had carried out the murder. It was two against one.
Kevin rambled in the witness stand, had difficulty understanding his trial and the mechanisms of the law. He was depicted as a vicious, drug-addled, psychotic Glaswegian. The two Frenchmen were given four years for actual bodily harm. Kevin, who sailed through the trial convinced he was going to be acquitted, was convicted of murder and was given life. The trial judge told him to “come back in 17 years. We’ll give you a tariff then, but never expect to get out.”
His own barrister didn’t even bother to see him after the conviction, but sent down an assistant with a packet of cigarettes and the message, “don’t think about appealing.”
That was in 1986 and Kevin O’Neill now enters his eighteenth year in prison.
Kevin was born in Scotland in 1965 to working-class parents: his mother was from Sligo and his late father from Derry. He grew up in a deprived area and at school was in the remedial class.
When he was ten he was sent to a speech therapist and had had a brain scan. At twelve he started running around with a gang, drank alcohol, sniffed glue, went shoplifting and joy-riding. Before long he had been in regular trouble with the police for minor offences and was in borstal and then on probation before setting out for ‘the Promised Land’ of London. In London he lived rough before moving into a squat with Christine.
At the time of his arrest in June 1986 he had been an abuser of alcohol and amphetamines and had been on acid on the night of the killing. He defence lawyer (at that time: he has a new one now) mistakenly presented the psychological evidence in a prejudicial way (he spoke about ‘diminished responsibility’), which suggested that Kevin had a serious personality disorder that was aggressively psychopathic. That depiction has caused major repercussions in how Kevin was subsequently received and maltreated by prison regimes throughout Britain.
In 1997, another specialist, Dr Bob Johnson, was highly critical of the psychiatrists used at the trial and said that their testimony had actually contributed to a “gross miscarriage of justice”.
From day one of his imprisonment, in every jail to which he has been moved, he has protested his innocence consistently and furiously – but unfortunately in a way that has allowed the establishment to view and present him as incorrigible and a danger to society. He has been involved in riots, he has set fire to his cell, he has been on a blanket protest, a dirty protest, hunger strike and has even slit his wrists to bring attention to his innocence. For a time he was kept in a hospital cell on suicide watch.
He refused to acknowledge authority or to answer his name and has been regularly held in punishment blocks for the past seventeen years. He ripped up his bedding and “walked about in shredded prison clothes as a statement of my independence.” He was isolated, divorced from his family whose hearts he had broken, but was content and secure in the strength of his protestations.
He even found love and married. For over ten years his wife Sinead and family members have fought a campaign to have his original conviction overturned and declared unsafe. Unfortunately, his case is no cause celebre, and attracts no personalities or stars and little finance.
Although he was not very good at communicating he began to write letters protesting his innocence and has found expression through painting (which the authorities have occasionally withdrawn for several years on end). He was placed in Category A status and told that he would have to serve at least thirty years – which sent his head spinning for several years and further explains, he says, his continued rebelliousness. He felt he was never given a chance, that he was being buried alive.
Three years ago the Criminal Cases Review Commission decided not to refer his case to the Court of Appeal and because he refuses to acknowledge guilt or show remorse as a condition for parole he continues to languish in jail.
Letters of solidarity should be sent to Kevin O’Neill, HMP SWALESIDE, Barbazon Road, Eastchurch, Sheerness, Kent. ME12 4AX
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison