Man 'needed medical aid after hearing confession'

The prisoner accused of lying over Michael Stone's cell confession to the murder of a mother and daughter was so upset by the horrific details of the killings that he needed medical help, three appeal judges were told today.

In a second appeal over the hammer murders of Dr Lin Russell and Megan, Stone's lawyers are claiming that he was convicted on the evidence of an unreliable witness seeking an advantage from the police or prison authorities.

But Nigel Sweeney QC, for the Crown, said on the second day of the appeal that the prisoner, Damien Daley, was seen by a psychiatric nurse the day after he reported he had heard Stone confess to the murders.

"Mr Daley was complaining that he was so upset at what the appellant had told him that he had not been sleeping as a result."

Edward Fitzgerald QC, for Stone, had also alleged that the convictions should be quashed because Daley was an unreliable witness who lied about his heroin addiction.

Mr Sweeney said the defence was now relying on the fact that Daley had lied about his addiction to heroin at Stone's trial.

"We submit that this is very much in the genre where he had already made very substantial admissions as to his own failures."

He said Daley had nothing to gain from the police or prison authorities by lying about the confession.

This had been the crucial evidence which convicted Stone, 44, at two separate trials of killing Dr Russell, 45, and Megan, six, and the attempted murder of Megan's sister Josie in 1996.

The first convictions in 1998 were quashed in February 2001 by three judges at the Court of Appeal and a retrial was ordered.

In October that year, Stone was convicted for a second time after a trial at Nottingham Crown Court and his three life sentences were reimposed.

But in March last year, Stone's lawyers, claiming that he did not receive a fair trial, won the right to another appeal.

At the trial, Daley told the jury he heard a voice coming through the pipework at Canterbury Prison, confessing to the July 1996 killings in Chillenden, Kent.

Dr Russell and her daughters were targeted as they walked home from a swimming gala. Josie, who was nine at the time, survived horrific head injuries.