MORE than 30 years after he was first charged with an armed robbery in Ilford, George Davis is still fighting to prove his innocence.

Davis had been wrongly jailed for the raid on the London Electricity in the town centre in 1974 and became something of cause celebre with graffiti and even a punk rock song proclaiming his innocence.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission has since said his conviction should be re-examined.

Davis was said by officers at the time to have been seen abandoning a getaway car while detectives lay in wait for him.

But the Court of Appeal heard from his counsel David Whitehouse that in fact heard the officer concerned, had been fact been in an unmarked car on an errand and had been confused.

Mr Whitehouse said Brian Grove had first identified another man as the culprit in an identity parade.

Davis, now 69, was arrested and given 20 years for robbery which prompted widespread support for his case.

‘George Davis is innocent OK’graffiti sprung up on walls acroos London and the slogan later became a song for the punk rock band, Sham 69.

He was freed in 1976 on the grounds that his conviction was technically unsound but he was never been declared ‘innocent.’

It is now alleged that the police suppressed evidence surrounding the identification which would have led to the case against Davis, who did later plead guilty to two other robberies, being dropped.

Before the appeal began before Lord Justice Hughes, Mr Justice Henriques and Mrs Justice Macur, Bernard Carnell, consultant at solicitors Shaw Graham Kersh, said in a statement issued on Davis’s behalf: “It is our intention to demonstrate to the Court of Appeal that evidence which shows Mr Davis’s convictions in 1975 to be unsafe has been in the hands of the authorities since at least 1977, when the final report of an independent police investigation into the case was completed by Det Chief Supt Moulder.”

The hearing continues.