The family of a west Belfast man awarded the maximum £1m compensation for being wrongly convicted of murdering a British soldier are not entitled to have their six-figure legal bill covered, the Court of Appeal has ruled.
Senior judges held that a statutory cap means the Department of Justice is under no obligation to pay the £120,000 costs of Liam Holden’s successful miscarriage of justice case.
But Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan suggested the authorities could still make the payment as a gesture of goodwill.
Mr Holden, who died in 2022, was the last man in the UK to be sentenced to hang after being found guilty of killing Private Frank Bell back in 1972.
The death penalty was commuted to life in prison before a 40-year fight to clear his name resulted in the quashing of the murder conviction in 2012.
Mr Holden always maintained British soldiers tortured him in order to obtain a false confession to Private Bell.
He later accepted £1m compensation for the miscarriage of justice, the maximum pay-out available under the terms of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
In a separate civil action against the Ministry of Defence, his estate was also awarded £350,000 damages last year for how he had been humiliated and exposed to violent waterboarding interrogation techniques during detention.
By that stage, the family’s legal costs in the miscarriage of justice case had been assessed as just over £120,000.
Judicial review proceedings were brought against the Department of Justice for refusing to foot the bill due to the cap on payments imposed by legislation.
The family’s lawyers claimed it was unlikely Parliament intended compensation to include the associated costs of obtaining that outcome.
Counsel for the department insisted, however, that whatever is paid out under the 1988 Act cannot exceed the statutory maximum of £1m.
Based on that position, Dame Siobhan said it was unsatisfactory to have engaged in a costs assessment process.
“The result is that the appellant and the solicitors can justifiably feel aggrieved that costs were not paid,” she stated.
However, she stressed the issue centred on the legal authority to pay out over the £1m cap.
If that circumstance arises the legislation does clearly prevent any further payment,” she held.
Dismissing the family’s challenge, she confirmed the department’s position to be legally correct adding: “The respondent could as an expression of goodwill pay the costs in this case given the tenable view that the taxation process was entered into with the expectation that costs would follow”.