Michael Walton - Portugal

July 05

Update as of September 2007:

The European Court of Human Rights has rejected Mr Walton's application.

Update as of June 2006:

Michael Walton was released from prison in May 2006. An application was submitted to the European Court of Human Rights in June 2006 with the pro bono assistance of Henrietta Hill of Doughty Street Chambers.

Update as of July 2005

The Supreme Court upheld the verdict but reduced the sentence by one year.

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Michael Walton is a 48-year-old British citizen and self-employed carpenter in the UK. On 10 November 2003, he was arrested in Portugal on his way home from a holiday in Brazil and was charged with trafficking cocaine. On 22 April 2004 he was found guilty and sentenced to 6 years in prison.

Michael had checked his bags in at Sao Paulo airport and did not expect to have any contact with them until arriving in London. He had no hand luggage and carried only a book to read on the flight.

When Michael was arrested, he was taken into an interrogation room and shown one of his bags, which lay on a table with all identification tags missing. He was asked to open the bag and when he did so, he found that his clothes were in disarray but nothing was actually missing. In the bag was a folder containing many forms of identification (credit cards, cheque books etc). Then he was shown a large package which had allegedly been in his bag. He refused to hold or touch this package to avoid leaving his fingerprints on it. Police later claimed that they had found two smaller packages in his bag as well.

While being interrogated, Michael informed the officers of his other checked-in baggage, which they retrieved. This bag still had all its security tags and labels attached and no drugs were found in it. Both the drugs and the bag in which they had supposedly been found, were said to have been destroyed before the case came to trial. Only photographs of the packages allegedly containing drugs and the bag itself were produced in court. A witness claimed that he had found the bag abandoned in the airport.

During the trial, the prosecutor portrayed Michael Walton as a "career criminal", which is entirely untrue. The judge was presented with an Interpol record stating that Michael is a valued member of the community, however he chose not to take accept this letter as evidence.

Michael was offered a reduced 5 year sentence if he admitted his guilt, which he refused. He was found guilty and appealed; however the sentence was not changed. A further appeal has been submitted to the Supreme Court. If this fails, there will be an application to the European Court of Human Rights.

Fair Trial Issues

1. Michael was denied access to both a lawyer and to consular officials despite several requests in the days following his arrest.
2. His request to have the contents of his two suitcases weighed, in order to be compared with the weight of the suitcases when they were checked in Sao Paolo, was refused without explanation.
3. At his first court appearance, he had not slept for over 50 hours. He was only allowed five minutes with his court-appointed lawyer, who did not speak English. At this hearing the prosecution told the court that Michael was found in possession of 3 plastic packages containing cocaine, hidden inside his suitcase. Michael was not able to refute this statement because nothing was translated for him. The translator told him that as she was employed by the court, she was only allowed to speak on the court’s instructions.
4. The judges allowed the prosecutor to guide his two witnesses through their statements. Both witnesses had been in the courtroom from the beginning, and again no part of their statements or the evidence they gave was translated for Michael, making it impossible for him to properly instruct his lawyer for cross-examination. The judge also refused to admit statements Michael submitted because they were in English. No-one was available to translate them into Portuguese. The judge did not suspend the trial in order to have them translated.
5. There was no forensic evidence to confirm that the packages contained drugs.
6. Defence counsel did not attend the sentencing hearing on 29 April 2004. Michael took the opportunity to submit his own statements, which he had had translated into Portuguese. The judges refused to admit these statements, deeming them to have been submitted too late.