5:09pm Friday 19th March 2010
By Jon Reeve
THE man who wrongly spent almost three decades behind bars for murdering a Hampshire woman has finally launched his bid for compensation.
A year ago today, Sean Hodgson tasted freedom for the first time in 27 years, after being cleared of raping and killing Teresa De Simone in Southampton in 1979.
But 12 months on, the victim of one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history has only received an interim compensation payment from the Home Office.
Julian Young, the solicitor who helped win him his freedom after DNA proved he had not killed the 22- year-old gas board clerk has today sent letters to the Forensic Sciences Service and Hampshire Police, urging them to make his client an offer.
Mr Hodgson is in line for up to £1m compensation from the Home Office, but Mr Young believes there are solid cases for further claims.
Both the Forensic Sciences Service and Hampshire Police have been criticised for their handling of his case, with errors blamed for Mr Hodgson not being cleared several years sooner.
In 1998 the FSS wrongly told his then legal team no DNA evidence from the murder scene – behind the Tom Tackle pub in Commercial Road – had survived, and any hopes of an appeal failed.
Hampshire police failed to notify Mr Hodgson’s solicitors when the real killer David Lace confessed to the crime in 1983, or when he killed himself five years later, apparently unable to live with the guilt.
Mr Young told the Daily Echo: “The letters are essentially asking them if they would like to consider their position before we commence legal proceedings.
“Hopefully the authorities will see sense and make sure that this poor man, who’s already suffered at the hands of the state, doesn’t have to worry about further legal fees, or the stress of going through the court system again.
“I haven’t done anything until now because he’s not been very well and we’ve not been able to get the right psychiatric reports done.
“But I’ve decided that about now it’s the right time to get things moving.”
Mr Young said Mr Hodgson has moved back near his family in the north east was readjusting slowly to life as a free man.
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