A former police officer has been labelled “a disgrace to the uniform” as he was jailed for a year in connection with the sectarian killing of Robert Hamill.
Jailing retired RUC Reserve Constable Robert Cecil Atkinson (70) at Craigavon Crown Court, Judge Patrick Lynch KC said “it’s a disgrace that you as a serving police officer should stoop so low as to deliberately mislead an investigation which you knew concerned a serious assault you had witnessed”.
“Ultimately it turned into a murder enquiry where the son of the household you contacted was a suspect,” the judge told Atkinson, highlighting that the pensioner “is the only person in this courtroom” who could shed light on the contents of that call.
“The public are entitled to expect the highest degree of probity from those entrusted to police and enforce the law. You have been a disgrace to the uniform.”
On the second day of his trial last April, Atkinson, from the Brownstone Road in Portadown, admitted that he had conspired with Andrea and Michael McKee to pervert the course of justice.
Atkinson and co-accused “agreed to give false information to police officers making enquiries about a telephone call made from your house...as to the identity of the person making that call”.
Following Atkinson’s admission, the PPS offered no further evidence against either defendant’s wife Eleanor Atkinson (70) or against 72-year-old Kenneth Hanvey, from the Derryanvil Road in Portadown and accordingly, not guilty verdicts were recorded in their cases.
Robert Hamill was beaten by a loyalist mob in the early hours of April 27 1997 and his serious assault, and later murder when he died on May 8, was the subject of a public inquiry because it was alleged that four police officers were positioned in a vehicle near the scene of the attack but did not intervene.
Mr Atkinson was one of the officers in the police vehicle.
Six individuals, including Allister Hanvey, were charged with murder but charges against five, including Hanvey, were subsequently withdrawn due to insufficient evidence. A sixth was acquitted following a trial where Atkinson gave evidence.
The charge against Atkinson arose because while he rang the Hanvey household while Mr Hamill lay fatally injured in hospital, he concocted a story with the McKees that it had been Michael McKee who made the call.
In October 1997, Atkinson claimed the McKees were staying at his house that night and that Michael rang the Hanvey household to check whether Allister Hanvey’s girlfriend, Mr McKee’s niece, had got home safely “as he had heard there had been a commotion in Portadown town centre”.
Judge Lynch told the court the PPS were not seeking to rely on allegations made by Andrea McKee that Atkinson had “warned Allister Harvey to dispose of his clothing…in anticipation that the police would inevitably regard him as a suspect which indeed they did”.
“At that stage it was an enquiry into a serious assault” rather than murder and the judge said that with “no credible evidence” as to the content of the call, “it cannot be established that the call frustrated or was an attempt to frustrate a proper line of enquiry into the assault of Mr Hamill”.
“It was however an attempt to frustrate an enquiry into a phone call that the accused was aware was connected to the investigation into the serious assault on Mr Hamill,” said Judge Lynch, adding that Atkinson “has never sought to provide an explanation for the call, he being the only person in this court who can from first hand knowledge tell us its contents”.
He said while the specific contents of the call are not known “the court is entitled to come to a common sense conclusion” in circumstances where Atkinson “as a serving police officer must have been well aware of the gravity of deliberately misleading the investigators”.
“The court can only assume that it was a serious matter that he was covering for and that it was in connection to the assault enquiry,” said the judge.
He told the court although there had only been one phone call that morning, “it set in train the elaborate conspiracy to cover it up”.
Turning to the appropriate sentence, Judge Lynch said he accepted there had been delay in bring the case to a conclusion given that Atkinson was first questioned in 1997.
That delay, said the judge, would be reflected in a decrease of the sentence as would the defendant’s significant health difficulties.