A MAN convicted of the double hammer killings of Lin and Megan Russell was found guilty of their murders on the basis of lies given by a fellow prisoner, the Court of Appeal has been told.

Michael Stone who had his first conviction for the killings quashed by the Court of Appeal in February 2000, claims that his subsequent conviction following a retrial in October 2001 was also unsafe.

He claims heroin addict Damien Daley lied about a confession Stone allegedly made while on remand at Canterbury Prison, to win police favour.

Stone, formerly of Skinner Street, Gillingham, was given three life sentences in October 1998, for the killings in Chillenden, near Dover, of Dr Lin Russell, 45, and her six-year-old daughter Megan, and the attempted murder of Megan's sister Josie, then aged nine.

Stone has launched a new bid to win his freedom after being granted permission to appeal last year after his lawayer argued that Daley's evidence was unreliable.

His lawyers opened the second appeal by raising doubts over the credibility of Daley, who claimed to have heard Stone confessing to the horrific killings. He argued that the trial judge had been under a duty to direct the jury about the reliability of evidence such as Daley’s. He said there had been no warning and that this amounted to a “misdirection.”

Edward Fitzgerald QC, for Stone, told the court: "Daley is a career criminal who has admitted lying to get by in life and has shown to have perjured himself on at least one occasion during Stone's trials.

"The prosecution's case depended on Daley's evidence that Stone had confessed to him. There was no scientific or eye-witness evidence to link Stone to the crime. But we say there are two fundamental problems with Daley's evidence on which the case stands or falls."

Daley denied ever taken heroin and concealed his mental health record from the juries in both of Stone's trials. It was Daley's evidence that lead to Stone losing his first appeal.

Stone won the right to a second trial after a witness in the first admitted to telling lies. He was convicted again in the second trial and then won the right to appeal. He has always maintained his innocence.

Mr Fitzgerald added that the judge in the second trial had failed do tell the jury about the dangers of trusting Daley's evidence.

Mr Fitzgerald said the court had accepted that cell confessions, particularly those not written down or tape-recorded, "were inherently unreliable".

The hearing, before Lord Justice Rose, sitting with Mr Justice Mitting and Mr Justice Walker, continues.