JUBILATION is the first emotion. As soon as I heard the news bulletin that the men accused of the murder of the newspaper boy were to be freed, I imagined them in Brixton revelling in the knowledge that this was their last night in jail: they had been inside since December 1978, when they were arrested and falsely accused of the murder.
I thought of the two women who in their very different ways have campaigned for their sons' freedom: Ann Skett, mother of Vincent Hickey, and Ann Whelan, mother of Michael.
But the jubilation swiftly turns to anger. Why has it taken so long for this grotesque injustice to be righted? The answer is that the judicial and police authorities are extremely reluctant to admit even the possibility that their system can go terribly wrong.
In December 1981, I sat with Ann Whelan and her husband, Fred, in the Court of Appeal listening to the astonishing new evidence in the case: that the first suspect for Carl Bridgewater's murder had committed another murder nearby. Lord Lane, Lord Chief Justice, contemptuously brushed the evidence aside and refused the men even leave to appeal.
The interests of justice were then left entirely to Ann Whelan. She approached witnesses, was reported to the police, hounded by people whose word she questioned. When at last the case was referred to the Court of Appeal in 1988 by the then Home Secretary, Mr Douglas Hurd, she spent 2 1/2 days in the witness box while the prosecution and the judges accused her of rigging evidence and interfering with the course of justice.
Throughout the nine week hearing, the central planks of the prosecution case were knocked out. All the new evidence favoured the men none of it favoured the prosecution. Yet on March 17th, 1989, the three judges clung to the rotten verdict. The whole affair stank of cover up.
But this was before the dam burst on the great injustices of the 1970s. The following October the Guildford Four walked free, then came the Birmingham Six; Judy Ward; the Tottenham Three ... Suddenly it was clear that the courts can make awful mistakes, and often do.
The bad fortune of Jimmy Robinson and the Hickeys was that their case came before the deluge, and so they rotted in prison for another nine years.
The new evidence which finally clears the men concerns the confession of Pat Molloy. The story of Molloy is a tragedy within a tragedy. He alone of the four arrested men had taken part in no burglaries or armed robberies in the weeks before the murder. He was a skilful carpenter.
Molloy was arrested because he was a friend of Robinson. He was taken to Wombourne police station where he was held without access to friends or lawyers for 10 days. During that time he signed the crucial Exhibit 54, a confession to being at Yew Tree Farm on the day the boy was shot along with three other accused.
As soon as he was allowed to see a lawyer, Molloy denounced his confession and insisted he had never been to the farm and had been with Jimmy Robinson at his girlfriend's house on the afternoon of the murder.
Molloy was advised not to deny his confession at the trial, but to give no evidence and hope he would be convicted only of manslaughter - as he was.
As soon as he was packed off to prison he was struck down with remorse. In a stream of letters to friends and family, he gave his story of what happened at Wombourne police station: he had been beaten across his face, his teeth had been broken, his food had been salted so he was forced to drink from the toilet bowl, he was bribed with beer and cigarettes, and eventually held tight from behind while the words of his confession were whispered into his ear.
Molloy died in 1981 and was never able to tell his full story in open court as he intended.
There will be talk in high society today about the men getting off on a technicality. It will be put about that they got off because a couple of coppers lied. Let us be completely clear. These men did not kill the newspaper boy. Someone else did.
And instead of the standard sulking which we can now expect from the Staffordshire police, perhaps some senior officers from their ranks might take it on themselves to bring the real murderer to justice.