Let's applaud the saving graces of a band of quiet heroes

Sometimes it's appalling to be proved right. That's how people connected with the growing list of British victims of miscarriages of justice felt last Friday when the sudden death was announced of Sally Clark, the 42-year-old solicitor jailed wrongly for three years for the murder of her two boys.

Paddy Hill, who runs the Glasgow-based Mojo (Miscarriages of Justice Organisation), told me: "We've dreaded this happening for years. We also dread someone being thrown out after their verdict being quashed and being so enraged they simply pick up a gun and go looking for revenge."

When you say her name - Sally Clark - the average newspaper-reader visualises the widely distributed image of her after release in 2003 by the Appeal Court in London: crop-haired, thin-faced and shattered.

You see this expression a lot outside the Court of Appeal in London . It's a mixture of relief and bewilderment. The gaggle of photographers always captures it perfectly. Sometimes a champagne cork is popped. Readers who see the snaps assume justice has been served and the victim is off to a bright future with compensation to help them.

That's not the case for two reasons. First, one of the lesser-known decisions by former Home Secretary Charles Clarke was to remove the guarantee of substantial compensation payments for wrongful conviction. How Clarke came to make this decision escapes me. It's an appalling, ill-conceived policy that should be reversed immediately.

Secondly, there's the inhumane policy of factoring "bed and breakfast" charges into compensation payouts. This ridiculous policy - agreed by law lords last week - argued that the system should withhold supposed "saved" expenses. Even apartheid South Africa didn't do that to Nelson Mandela. Yet it happens in England and Wales today. Thank goodness, the Scottish Executive quietly rejected the same policy.

We all bear responsibility for this cynical change in attitude. A decade and a half ago, miscarriages of justice were a novelty in Britain . While brave journalists and producers such as Ian McBride, Ray Fitzwalter and Gus Macdonald battled to bring the miscarriages of justice to us via World in Action from Granada TV, it was the popular press that chose to hoist them on to front-pages. Even Hollywood made movies about the Guildford Four with Daniel Day Lewis starring in In the Name of the Father. Then short-term memory syndrome kicked in and, in clichéd terms, the dogs barked, and the caravan moved on.

And, it came to pass, World in Action was dumped; the list of victims of miscarriages of justice grew, yet the tragic topic became passe to some in the media; and people felt jealousy for the money they thought the victims received. Editors cottoned on to this and stopped covering the cases. Post-release reality - damaged marriages, squandered-compensation payments and the slide into substance abuse for some - was scantily covered.

Yet, that's the world Mojo lives in. Working out of tiny offices in Glasgow , it pioneers successfully a caring strategy for those chewed up and spat out by the justice system. These are individuals forgotten by the media who've been assessed by internationally renowned psychiatrists as being more damaged with post-traumatic stress disorder than Vietnam veterans. Yet they get no help when they're released.

Thankfully, a ray of hope exists for them in one small country: Scotland .

In the same week that Sally Clark died, the Scottish Executive quietly communicated that it was funding Mojo for another year. It was a forward-thinking and heart-warming decision in a depressing week.

With this in mind, as the political battle lines are drawn for the May 3 elections and as our leaders prepare to engage in what US political consultants call "negative attack ads" can a journalist plead with his readers to do two things today?

First, can we all stop and recognise the correctness of the politicians in the executive supporting a small group of brave people doing a humane and globally-recognised, groundbreaking thing? Without money and political support, their small office would be closed, the phones would go unanswered and victims of miscarriages of justice would find themselves alone.

Secondly, can we all, just for a heartbeat, silently engrave the same Sally Clark on to our souls for the next 24 hours, and pause to consider that had this innocent mother lived in Scotland, and had she spoken to the voices on the other end of the phone at Mojo, she might have had a cause for hope, she might have had her terrible burden shared and she might have been given the means to hang on to the thin thread of this lonely life for maybe one more day - a day that might have made all the difference.

Thank you.

9:14pm Wednesday 21st March 2007

By EAMONN O'NEILL