27 years banged up for nowt!

DNA is a very fine thing. It can more or less prove with certainty that bodily fluids found somewhere can be matched with the person who left them there. It can also prove that there is no match. So for those people in jail for something they didn't do it must be a godsend. However, for Sean Hodgson, who is 57, it has come a bit late. He's been 27 years in jail because he confessed to a murder. His solicitor says he was a pathological liar at the time. Not a good thing to be in a police station.

Hodgson's case has now been sent to appeal over claims tests on semen found at the scene prove it was not his DNA. That's probably all it will prove for the moment. Of course, DNA has it's timebomb technique. The real killer will be hoping, assuming he's still alive, that his DNA won't show up. All a matter of time. Which is exactly what Mr.Hodgson has been spending.

He is only a year or so younger than me. What was I doing 27 years ago? Wow! The Falklands War was just about to start. Channel 4 too. He will need some adjusting to live in the credit crunching world. Julian Young, his lawyer, says, "He is anxious because he is going to be facing the outside world for the first time in a large number of years. He will have to make a life and reorganise his life for the future". I'd say he's anxious.

I hope the various agencies are preparing to help him. After all, that length of time will not have helped him to come to terms with the prospects of living in a society which is dealing with an imploding economy. Getting a job will be hard. Just surviving will be a challenge. He will need his wits about him. It's sod's law when it comes to proving your innocence and he's had the misfortune to be let out when all this is going on.

Now there will be one place going free in the prison system. There's a whole gaggle of corporate miscreants who should be offered the place, but I doubt that will happen. It must be the worst nightmare to be in jail for something you didn't do. These miscarriages of justice carry on. I only hope that the criminal justice system is learning from it all.