law and socitey

 

The duties of the CCRC and its states are defined in the Criminal Appeals Act 1995. Its role is to assess cases where maybe there might be a case of miscarriage of justice and refer this to the courts by investigating it, for the chance of the conviction or sentence to be up held Overall, the fundamental objective must be that the commission becomes and remains an effective remedy for those who are compelled to use it.

Since April 1997 the commission has been established and has only completed 1,202 cases, this is actually a third less then what’s expected. The CCRC work at such a slow pace due to the high amount of investigation and thought it takes to work out a case it has been doubted to be ineffective so they are looking on increasing the numbers of case workers to speed the process up. The CCRC’s consultation paper states that the easier cases are dealt more efficiently and quicker. This contradicts the CCRC as they have a remedy for the simpler cases and not found a solution for the more difficult ones. This is in order to produce a better resolution rate showing that the more complex cases are not being dealt with. There is also a major limitation of concentrating on exceptional miscarriages cases that are brought to light via the extra-judicial procedures of the CCRC, is that all manner of routine miscarriages have been neglected.

The commission rose to the challenge against the high rate of applications against the limited resources they had during 2005-2006. In the annual report many changes were stated by the commission that came into action in regards to the review process, such as appointing case review manager as group leaders so the work is done more effectively and these appointments took affect on the 6th march. Because of this the commission completed 1012 cases, however the intake of cases was 938 but there was also 73 re-applications, which were not referred to the courts, as they were no new evidence that came to light.

On the 31st of March 2005 the waiting period for cases reduced from 368 to 247 a year later on the same date. As stage two is the most intensive part of the whole process, it is still rather time consuming and this has raised many issues. On the other hand the CCRC believe that the new changes that have taken place will reduce the waiting time .It could take up to 6 years for a case to be reviewed, which displays a lack of effectiveness on behalf of the Commission. Word of mouth say that the CCRC is a money making scheme and a waste of the tax mans money.

 

In the case of Andrew Adams the CCRC look into his case and decided that this case should be referred to the courts because Mr. Adams received insufficient legal advice, as there had been mistakes in the calculations of the case as well as the prosecution tampering with the evidence. The Court of Appeal finally overturned the conviction on The 12th of January 2007 and he was freed for a crime he did not commit after 14 years. The Court of appeal rejected his first appeal in 1997 and when this had happened he turned to the CCRC, the CCRC reviewed his case and found that his sentence may be a miscarriage of justice so they sent it back to the court of appeal to be reviewed in September 2005. In December 2006 the second appeal took place where the courts realised that his conviction should be over turned because the evidence in the first trail was insufficient. The conviction was overturned on the 12th January. This shows how much time it can take the CCRC to review a case and over turn a conviction.

 

In the case above you can see how important the role of the CCRC can be. This cases was very popular in the eye of the media, this could be one of the reasons why the CCRC gave it so much significance. The effective of the CCRC was heavily criticised as to whether the cases would be scrutinised and that the commissioners assured the public that each application sent to them would be thoroughly examined. Two list were formed by the CCRC, ‘Liberty List’ and the ‘Priority List. The prisoners who apply whilst in prison they would automatically be put on the ‘priority list’ which made sense because if there were not guilty and serving a sentence it would need to be seen to first and the ones remaining are put on the ‘liberty list’. The ‘liberty list’ is not as efficient as the other as it works at a slower pace, which results in the waiting time to reach up to 5 years. This seems very unfair on other prisoners and people and can have many drawbacks on them

There are 14 members in the commission. The problem that lies in the CCRC is that the government does not give them enough funding, so there’s not enough case workers being employed to take on the work so this is slowing the review stage down, the critics state that the CCRC are wholly independent. This is due to the build-up of all the cases. There are currently 1,200 that have yet still to be reviewed. A former journalist Chris Mullin an MP, said: “Miscarriages of justice can occur under any system and I have no doubt they will occur in the future”. But Mr Mullin stated: “we should never be complacent. The system has improved considerably since the big miscarriages of the mid-1970s. The most important change is that people who believe they are victims of miscarriages of justice have somewhere to go: the CCRC.”

Mr Mullin agrees to the fact that the CCRC has a build-up of cases and “could do with speeding up its handling of cases which have been referred back to the Court of Appeal by the CCRC have resulted in quashed convictions.” Mr Mullin that adversarial process tends to have its flaws:  “There is a strong case for a system which finds the truth, rather than a contrast strong case between skilled adversaries. But you should realise that the continental inquisitorial system had also led to miscarriages of justice.” The reason for this happening is due to the finances, which seems to be the problem where a body like this is funded publicly. The CCRC have admitted this problem but have also stated that this should change with the new structure of how cases shall be reviewed also the procedure that shall follow on the more difficult cases.

There are many limitations when it comes to examining cases due to the limited number of resources they have to investigate a case. Adding to that there is a shortage of caseworkers they have working each case. When you have all these problems its only going to lead to a backlog of cases that have not been worked or even looked at.  The Home Office got a request from the CCRC in January 1998 for an increase in the number of caseworkers. This was rejected and the home office stated that they had enough caseworkers to do the job and they needed to focus on the main issues of cases in a less time consuming manner and putting these main issues under the light. This can be seen in this article taken from the annual report for the CCRC,’superficially attractive at it may be to skimp on thoroughness, the cost of mistakes leading to resubmission of cases, judicial review and diminished public confidence in the professional competence of the Commission, are likely to be overwhelming greater…Not referring cases that should be referred, for lack of thoroughness in the review, perpetuates miscarriage of justice.’ The Commission did not let the home office get of so quickly and so then the home agreed. At the moment there are 50 caseworkers. The CCRC states in it annual report, ‘to make strenuous efforts to improve our case working efficiency and finds way of working more quickly and cheaply, but we cannot compromise on the quality of the work we do’.

Miscarriage of justice cases were always in the lime light in the 1980 and in the news, 38 cases that were referred back to the courts by the home office, 37 out of them had their conviction overthrown. During the time of the 1980’s and early 1990’s showed the effects of the courts and policing mal practice. Which convicted people with insufficient evidence. This would mean to consider ‘appalling vista’ of the police malpractice and prosecution. ‘Would mean the police had lied…this is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say: It cannot be right that these actions should go any further’. Judith Ward was convicted of a series of IRA bombing at an early age of 25 and eagerly made a voluntary acknowledgment to have taken part in the bombing due to her mental state. After 18 years her conviction was overthrown. The Court of Appeal set clear about the concise rules in relation to the prosecutions duty to disclose. The case of Edwards is another example, where the police had allegations that they fabricated the evidence leading to the closure of the West Midlands Serious Crimes Squad. In this example the Court of Appeal decided that the prosecution had a responsibility to present police officers disciplinary record to the defence. As the due process principles had been recognized through the cases mentioned above, it showed that the judiciary was not blind to the fact that systematic malpractice does exist by the police and other prosecution bodies.

The CCRC have been criticised because of the way they refer cases. An example for this is the case of Knighton where he was convicted when he had been dead for 75 years. This is wasting time and cases and it can be seen, as they are not doing their job appropriately. All the courts had to state when this was referred was that they were  ‘troubled that this conviction was referred at all, nothing that there are here no issues of exceptional notoriety, and therefore public interest….’ As they stated ‘the continuing work of the CCRC represents a significant ongoing threat to the Court of Appeals ability to manage its role within the criminal justice system’. As it has been noted previously the CCRC takes extra precaution when there is a need to refer certain cases. By taking this into account the Commission has on many occasions tested the courts boundaries when it comes to the reopening of cases, which have been referred to the court. Therefore many cases have been referred back to the courts where new law has come to surface compared to the time of the first trial, the case is ten seen from different angles along side the new law to see if it can be seen in different light or if it changes the conviction. It is possible for judges to manipulate legal resources in order to mirror their own opinion and reach a decision that they might think. This can be hard as there decision is very important as they are stuck in the middle of crime control and statuary legislation, some judges tend to support the crime control values compared to others. In these situations decisions are made on the material and new evidence the judges are entitled to which may sway their final decision. The chairman Zellick of CCRC notes: ‘the court works under great pressure; it must call on a large number of judges, many of them are specialist in criminal law; and the standards of advocacy may not always give the court the assistance it needs…the legal situation is far from clear and it is not easy for the Commission to apply the courts case law. It may be conflicting, unclear, or underdeveloped. In those situations, we must seek to understand the state of the law and then apply the statutory “real possibility” test as best we can. In making a reference in those circumstances, we will be giving the court an opportunity to develop or clarify the law’. 

There is definitely the need for the CCRC otherwise cases of miscarriage of justice would not come to the surface and will reduce in the future the amount of miscarriages from happening. This is thanks to the commission and the cases workers.

Also adding to that the CCRC work has led to the public sceptical about the work of the system. The amount of backlog of cases that are not worked quick enough can be seen as a major problem and let down for the CCRC but this can also be put down to the fault of the government who wont fund them enough to employ more workers. The most time consuming cases would involve thorough investigations and in many circumstances the applicant’s sentence would have finished when it comes to the time of the reviewing of the case.

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