Simon Hall

Simon Hall (1977 or 1978 – 23 February 2014) was a British murderer who was the subject of a lengthy campaign by miscarriage of justice activists to overturn his conviction, only for him to go on to confess to the murder he was convicted of. Hall stabbed 79-year-old pensioner Joan Albert to death in her home in Capel St Mary, Suffolk in 2001, and was convicted of her murder two years later. Subsequently, the high-profile miscarriage of justice programme Rough Justice took up his case and aired a programme campaigning for him. Several MPs, Bristol University's 'Innocence Project' campaign group, his mother and his girlfriend Stephanie Hall were also involved in campaigning for him, and the Criminal Cases Review Commission (which had itself been set up in response to Rough Justice in 1997) referred his case to the Court of Appeal in 2009. However, the appeal court dismissed the appeal and he subsequently confessed his crime to prison authorities in 2013, before committing suicide in prison in 2014. His case was said to have gravely undermined the claims of many prisoners who claim their innocence and embarrassed miscarriage of justice activists, having proved that they had campaigned for a guilty man.

The family of victim Joan Albert released a statement following Hall's confession saying: "During the last 10 years the publicity surrounding the appeals has been very distressing for our family, making moving on impossible... we are also grateful to those who have helped us throughout this difficult ordeal".

Murder Hall was a burglar and had previous convictions for violence. Hall had been out drinking with friends in Ipswich the night before the murder and had an alibi for most of the night and into the early hours of the following morning, except for between 5:30am and 6:15am, which was believed to be the time when the murder was committed.

Claims of innocence and assistance

Hall refused to acknowledge his guilt and his legal team attempted to discredit the fibre evidence against him. In 2007 his case was promoted by Rough Justice. Hall's wife Stephanie, who he had married in prison in 2005, was convinced of his claims of innocence, saying: "There was never a shadow of a doubt that they had the wrong guy, he didn't have it in him – he's too sensitive and kind." Even after this appeal was rejected the Bristol Innocence Project continued to promote his claims of innocence, complaining that the Court of Appeal had not taken his claims of innocence "seriously" and saying that they didn't seek "the truth of whether alleged victims of wrongful convictions are innocent or not". Despite this, Stephanie Hall continued to protest his innocence to national prisoners' newspaper Inside Time.

Confession In 2013, following the rejection of his appeal, Hall formally admitted his guilt to prison authorities after ten years of claiming his innocence, leading to outrage in the national media. Thousands of hours of legal research had been wasted on attempting to clear Hall's name, including many hours of work conducted by unpaid volunteers of the University of Bristol Innocence Project. In January earlier in the year the CCRC had also been examining a new claim by Hall that he was carrying out a burglary elsewhere on the day Albert's body was found, but Hall dropped this appeal after he finally admitted his guilt. Stephanie Hall accepted that she had wrongly believed in his innocence.

Impact The Hall case was described as an embarrassment to miscarriage of justice activists and an example of a case that they "quietly bury" as they do not wish to appear to have wrongly defended a guilty person. The New Statesman said that the Hall case had "gravely undermined the claims of many of the genuinely innocent".