HAMLYN - College of Social Sciences and International Studies ...

Criminal Justice
miscarriages of justice after all appeals have been exhausted.
The old system left this process in the hands of the Home
Secretary. The new system established by the Criminal Appeal
Act 1995 places it with the Criminal Cases Review Commission,
an agency independent of government. The CCRC started work
in January 1997. The general view seems to be that it has got off
to a good start—though the backlog problem due to the volume
of cases is a serious problem. 54
Needless to say, the setting up of a better system for dealing
with alleged miscarriages of justice does not affect the likelihood
that a miscarriage of justice will occur. They occur for a great
variety of reasons. Sometimes they are the result of wrongful
acts by the police such as the fabrication or planting of evidence,
perhaps the result of misplaced zeal to secure a conviction. Or
they are the result of a failure by the prosecution to comply with
the duty of disclosure of material that might assist the defence.
This has now been officially acknowledged as so serious a
worry that the new Director of Public Prosecutions has asked
the CPS Inspectorate to inquire into it and the Home Office has
set up an interdepartmental working party on the problem. The
Attorney General is to issue new guidelines to prosecutors. 55
Often miscarriages of justice are the result of human failings,
such as mistaken eye-witness evidence or other errors made by
prosecution witnesses, including forensic scientists. Sometimes
they are the result of a false confession by the defendant leading
to a guilty plea, as happened in the case of Judith Ward. Quite
often they are caused by the incompetence or inefficiency of the
defence lawyers, in failing to get the defendant's case together
or failing to pursue important lines of inquiry. Sometimes no
one is really to blame. An innocent defendant has the bad luck
to be convicted because of strong but misleading circumstantial
evidence.
54 The projected backlog in March 1999 represented a queuing time of between
three and four years on the resources then available to the CCRC. Four out of
five (79 per cent) cases were declared eligible to be considered. By November
1999 the Commission had taken a decision in 1,200 out of 2,826 cases. It was
working on 468 cases and 1,158 were waiting to be dealt with. 68 cases had
been referred back to the Court of Appeal. By November 1999 the Court had
heard 25 of the 68 referrals. In 18, the verdict was quashed or the sentence was
modified. In the other seven cases the conviction or sentence was upheld.
(Information supplied by the CCRC, November 1999). In the seven years up to
1988 the Home Office referred 42 cases to the Court.
55 Tom Sargant Memorial Lecture of the Attorney General, Lord Williams of
Mostyn, November 29,1999. (See www.justice.homepad.com.)
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