
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 24, 1994                   TAG: 9402240105
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND                                LENGTH: Medium

IRISH MOVIE FIGURE'S REAL APPEAL HEARD

With a row full of Kennedy family members sitting up front, three judges began Wednesday to hear the appeal of a 1975 murder conviction brought by Paul Hill - one of the Guildford Four, who were recently portrayed in the film "In the Name of the Father" as innocent victims of British police and jurisprudence.

Hill's contention is that his confession to a murder in Belfast - the only evidence against him - was coerced while he was being held in the police station at Guildford, in Surrey, England, for questioning over the bombing of a pub there.

Hill and three others were tried and convicted of the pub bombing, which killed five people. They were released in 1989 after serving 15 years of life sentences when a defense attorney was able to establish inconsistencies indicating that confession to the pub bombing had been fabricated by the police.

Although the Paul Hill role is small, the movie has made a celebrity of the 39-year-old man. Eight months ago, after a three-year courtship, he married Mary Courtney Kennedy, a daughter of Robert Kennedy.

Inside the courthouse, Hill and his wife sat side by side in the first row. Nearby was her mother, Ethel Kennedy, and three other Kennedy children, Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, D-Mass., Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Kerry Kennedy Cuomo.

Behind the 20 people in the Kennedy group sat eight members of the family of Brian Shaw, a British soldier who was 21 years old when he was lured to a pub in Lower Falls, in West Belfast, kidnapped, tortured and killed by the Irish Republican Army.

by CNB