A man who spent 18 years behind bars for two murders he didn't commit has revealed his horror at calls for the death penalty to be reintroduced, claiming such a law could have cost him his life.



Great Harwood man Peter Fell had his conviction for the 1982 murders of Ann Lee and Peggy Johnson in Aldershot overturned in 2001 - but remains haunted by his time in prison today.



Mr Fell, 49, says he is frightened by calls for the re-introduction of capital punishment, which were prompted by the launch of a petition on a news government website by political blogger Paul Staines last week.



Although the petition by Mr  Staines - better known as Guido Fawkes - only calls for the death penalty for child and police killers, other petitions have already been set up calling for wider use of capital punishment.



Opinion polls this week suggested more than half of the public support a return to capital punishment - and currently around 40 of the 200 petitions on the government's e-petition website relate to the death penalty. Once a petition receives 100,000 signatures, MPs will consider discussing it in parliament.



Speaking to the Accrington Observer, Mr Fell says he fears he wouldn’t have lived to prove his innocence had capital punishment been still in use in the 1980s.



Mr Fell, who grew up in care with foster parents and at Blake Gardens Children's Home in Great Harwood, said: “From 1985 I was trying to prove there was a miscarriage of justice but it is very hard to get a voice, and get people inside the system to listen to you.



“The thought of bringing back the death penalty really frightens me because I know what it could have meant for me had it been around when I went to prison. Would I have been able to prove my innocence?



“It took me 17 years to have my conviction quashed, who knows if I'd have had the time to do that if capital punishment existed."



From his time in prison, Mr Fell, who now lives in Essex with wife Elaine, who he married a year after being released, believes he knows that a life sentence is a much worse punishment than a death sentence.



Mr Fell, who attended Norden High School in Rishton, said: “If someone is sentenced to life in prison, every day they will have to think about what they’ve done and how they've ended up there, and what they have wasted. Making someone pay with their life takes that away.



“Knowing what I know now from being in prison, I think that if I was the relative of someone who had been killed, I would rather the person who did it spent their life in prison rather than be killed. It gives them a quick way out.”



Opinion polls suggest almost half of people believe the death sentence would lead to a reduction in violent crime, but Mr Fell added: “If someone commits and crime and knows they will probably be killed if convicted, there is no incentive for them to plead guilty early.



“That means it’s more likely relatives of the victim will be put through extra stress with a trial.



“There's also the danger that people who commit murders will go on and commit worse crimes knowing that if they're caught they'll be killed, so what have they got to lose? It's hard to imagine but that is the way some people think.”



Peter was convicted in 1984 for the double murder in Aldershot, close to where he had been based with the army. The jury spent 25 hours determining their verdict.



An initial appeal was rejected but in 1999 the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Mr Fell's conviction back to the Appeal Court after expressing concern at non-disclosure of evidence, the way police interviews had been carried out and psychological reports which had been prepared since the trial.



Mr Fell was released 'without a stain on his character' by appeal court judges in March 2001.



Mr Fell had initially admitted the killings when interviewed by police, but experts brought in for the appeal hearing said there was evidence to suggest the confession had been prompted by inducement, while officers had also ignored his repeated requests for legal representation. 



The judges concluded that many aspects of his confession were inconsistent with how the two women were murdered, and had all the information the judges had been made available to the jury in 1984, Mr Fell would not have been found guilty.



The judges described as ‘reprehensible’ the fact that Mr Fell was refused legal representation for over 54 hours during his police interviews.



The appeal court also found there was evidence that Mr Fell at the time had a track record for making things up when he was in the Army.



A medical expert who worked with Mr Fell in prison had noted that Mr Fell appeared to be a ‘pathological confessor’ but never made his concerns known at the time. Mr Fell added: “I always felt someone, somewhere in the system knew I shouldn’t have been convicted but when you are one person fighting against the system, it is hard to be heard.



“The system doesn't want to be wrong, but if the death sentence is re-introduced, I have no doubt that innocent people will die.”