Problem of Miscarriages of Justice in England and Wales - Essay Example

School: CRIME, JUSTICE, SOCIETY Lecturer: Critically assess the extent to which the criminal appeals system and the CCRC deal with the problem of miscarriages of justice in England and Wales. Introduction Laws and for that matter the criminal system are in place to protect all within the society and ensure that the society becomes a better place for all to live. It would be noted from a socialist perspective that even though we all enter the world as individual being and thus have the right to our individual freedoms, we come to belong to a singular social system where the differences in the individual freedoms of people must be promoted and protected on an equal scale.1 In the absence of such an attempt to bring some level of equality in the protection and promotion of the fundamental freedoms of all people, the human society will be no different from the Animal Kingdom where there is the survival of the fittest.2 One way of bringing equality to the practice of individual freedoms is through the enactment of laws and the running of the criminal system, which defines punishment for people for various offences committed. As much as the criminal system is important in defending the defenceless and ensuring that there is greater level of fairness in society, it cannot be said to be faultless. Recently, attention has been drawn to the limitation of the criminal justice system, particularly when it comes to the issue of miscarriage of justice.3 This is because whiles trying to enforce enacted laws, there have been cases where people who do not deserve punishment and prosecution have unduly received these. With this situation in the criminal justice system recognised and acknowledged, there have been different interventions that have been taken to solving it. In this paper, two major interventions namely the criminal appeal system and the criminal cases review commission are critically assessed in the context of how best they help in solving the problem of miscarriage of justice in England and Wales. Overview of the Criminal Appeal System The Criminal Appeal System in the U.K is directly vested in the roles and procedures of Her Majesty’s Court of Appeal in England and mandated under the Criminal Appeal Act 1995. As the name implies, the criminal appeal system is in place to ensure that people who have issues with the passage of judgement in other lower courts will have the opportunity of appealing their judgements. In the U.K., there is so much prominence placed on the criminal appeal system such that the Her Majesty’s Court of Appeal is made to come only second to the Supreme Court of the U.K. The Appeal Court and for that matter the criminal appeal system has been in place since 1875 with the purpose of ensuring that no one falls out on the need to having fair hearing in the court of law. Even though the Court of Appeal is in place to hear both cases of criminal appeals and civil appeal, the criminal appeal system as an independent component of the criminal system emphasises on criminal cases alone. Within the Appeal Court however, criminal cases are headed by the Lord Chief Justice, whiles the Master of Rolls take care of civil appeals. There has often been the debate as to whether or not the criminal appeal system is not an indictment on the authority and workings of the lower courts that hear cases. The fact that the Court of Appeal has been elevated above the Crown Court, County Courts and High Court of Justice from which cases are transferred however puts this debate to rest.4 The Criminal Cases Review Commission Explained Also established under the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, the criminal cases review commission (CCRC) is in place in the criminal justice system of U.K to ensure that a public body is given statutory responsibility to investigate all alleged cases of miscarriage of justice. In comparison to the criminal appeal system, it would be said that whereas the criminal appeal system deals with all cases of appeal with a case that has gone through the process of court jurisdiction, the CCRC’s mandate is specifically defined in relation to cases alleged miscarriage. The logic here is that it is not all cases that require appeal that involve miscarriage of justice. However, it will be noted that having a criminal appeal system in place serves as the first step in ensuring that possible instances of miscarriage of justice are done away with entirely.5 But once such cases of miscarriage of justice should take place, then the CCRC will be in place to investigate such cases. The CCRC and the Court of Appeal work to complement each other but not to interfere with one another. For example, given the fact that real instances of miscarriage of justice may occur after a Court of Appeal’s ruling goes down against a person, the CCRC always works after the Court of Appeal. This way, the CCRC makes recommendations back to the Court of Appeal when investigations have established firm grounds that the Court of Appeal could overturn its decision and avoid possible miscarriage of justice.6 The Problem of Miscarriage of Justice in England and Wales Miscarriage of justice is referred to by many as a fracture in the legal system, whereby a person is convicted and punished for a crime he or she did not commit.7 Given the complex nature of the legal system, most commentators have been careful in not associating miscarriage of justice to a mistake. Miscarriage of justice is therefore hardly referred to as a mistaken justice process. Rather, it is considered as a premature form of justice and hence the miscarriage of it. In the England and Wales, proponents of the legal system acknowledge the fact that miscarriage of justice can take place with no intentional or personal interests on the part of the bench in being injustice. For this reason, there are various interventions and programs in place to ensure that once there has been the pronouncement of judgement, people will still have the opportunity of having a repeal of the judgement that is passed once they have a feeling that they are not guilty of the crimes levelled against them.8 In the U.K, miscarriage of justice is not a new phenomenon. The problem that is often faced in some of these cases of miscarriage of justice however has to do with the fact that getting an overturn of a court ruling is not easy.9 This is regardless of the fact that there are a lot of interventions aimed at achieving this. In most cases, people get an overturn only after they have finished serving their terms in prison or have died.10 How the Criminal Appeal System addresses Miscarriage of Justice Given how frustrating it is for people to at times get judgements overturned because they have been wrongfully convicted, there are a number of programmes in place to ensure that the justice system becomes fair and friendly to all. A typical example of such a programme is the criminal appeal system in the U.K. There are a number of specific ways in which the criminal appeal system works to address the issue of miscarriage of justice. In the first place, the criminal appeal system, which is a counterpart to the civil division of the Court of Appeal, ensures that there is a widening of the hierarchy of court ruling where a person can have his or her case re-heard in the Criminal Division. What this means is that for any case involving trial on indictment with a jury and coming from a Crown Court or lower, it is possible to order the issue of writs of venire de novo.11 With this provision, the ruling of all other courts with the exception of the Supreme Court can have their cases overturned at the Criminal Division as part of the criminal appeal system.12 Currently, the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal, which is responsible for criminal hearings, is bound by the Supreme Court. This does not mean however that where sentences are passed by the Supreme Court, the criminal appeal system ceases to work. This is because the Supreme Court ruling can be overturned by the Supreme Court itself, though this is rare.13 Another way in which the criminal appeal system seeks to address the issue of miscarriage of justice, apart from its all-inclusiveness from every other court is that appeal for justice can actually take place in any next highest court in the hierarchy.14 This is considered to be one of the most flexible means of achieving a fair criminal appeal system. This is because with this provision, not all cases of appeal have to travel all the way to the Court of Appeal, the travel of which can be seen as a very cumbersome process.15 This system was started with the coming to force of the Access to Justice Act 1999, whereby with a permission made to the lower court, a higher court can be made to hear a case of an appeal.16 The fact that the Access to Justice Act 1999 allows as part of the criminal justice system that a court higher than one that just heard a case can undertake the appeal processes mean is that there is the possibility of double appeal. A typical situation in which this can happen is when the appeal takes place in a High Court or a County Court. This however happens only under specific instances when the Court considers the case to involve "an important point of principle or practice" or "there is some other compelling reason for the Court of Appeal to hear it".17 In Tanfern Ltd v Cameron-MacDonald, the reason cited for the limitation was overburdening of justices at the Court of Appeal.18 How the CCRC addresses Miscarriage of Justice Already, the CCRC has been explained but it is important to understand the specifics of how it functions to address the issue of miscarriage of justice. First, it has been stated that with the criminal appeal system alone, it is very difficult to have a second appeal, even though this is not impossibility.19 With the CCRC however, an avenue is created for people whose cases of assumed miscarriage of justice to have an appeal court revisiting a case on which the appeal court has already passed judgement. In this instance, the term appeal court is used to refer to any higher court that appeals a case from a lower court, but not excluding the Court of Appeal. As a review commission, the work of the CCRC is considered by many to be a more lucrative and publicly accepted means of having chances of miscarriage of justice avoided. This is because the commission is more concerned about investigations rather than hearing of cases.20 The reason this is a very important aspect of the means by which the CCRC works to prevent miscarriage of justice is that in the regular criminal appeal system, new evidence is a very important requirement to succeed with the overturn of a sentence. Through their investigations however, it is always possible that very substantial new evidence will come up, based on which the appeal court will have a ground to overturn a judgment that was otherwise heading for a miscarriage of justice.21 It is therefore right to say that the CCRC complements the role of the criminal appeal system in preventing miscarriage of justice. One more principle that guides the work of the CCRC since its establishment under the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 is that the commission seeks to differentiate a mere over turn of a ruling from miscarriage of justice.22 This means that the CCRC is more focused on instances of miscarriage of justice than the mere need to act as an appeal system. This is because it would be noted that not all cases of overturn of ruling from an appeal is equal to appropriation of justice.23 In a very logical manner, one can expect that a person who is truly guilty of an offence can keep going through the appeal system to have a case of guilt overturned. In such a situation, it is the latter that rather becomes miscarriage of justice. But because the focus of the CCRC is on nothing more than investigation of allegations of miscarriage of justice, it is able to undertake thorough due process that differentiates such instances of greed for justice from real miscarriage of justice. By extension, the 70% success rate of appeals of cases referred back to appeal courts by the CCRC can really be judged as a near 70% of miscarriage of justice overturned.24 This is because before the CCRC makes any of its average of 1 referral in every 8 working days, it ensures that all forms of investigations that are needed to authenticate miscarriage of justice are in place. Conclusion The paper has helped in establishing the fact that even though the existing Court of Appeal is in place as a merger with the Court of Criminal Appeal to form the Criminal Division, the Court of Appeal or the Criminal Division are not the only components of the criminal justice system in the U.K. As a matter of fact, any provisions under the criminal justice system including the work of the CCRC and the provisions of the Access to Justice Act 1999 all come together to ensure that there is a criminal appeal system that seeks to give fair hearing the public after one form of judicial ruling has been passed. Even though the criminal appeal system has worked over the years to reduce cases of miscarriage of justice, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that there is still room for much more to be done. This is because for most of the time, hearings from appeals have come often too late when much harm have already been coursed. To this end, it is important that pragmatic steps will be taken in improving the criminal appeal system to make the protection of human rights better secured. This can be done with the appeal procedures and the work of the CCRC as a major target. This is because until now, it has been these two outfits that are mostly resorted to in cases of miscarriage of justice. As a country, U.K must continue to aim for the need to be touted as a place where the right of people against unfair hearing can be protected by avoiding most of the cases and forms of miscarriage of justice its courts have recorded. References Laws and Regulations Senior Courts Act 1981, section 53(2)(d) Sections 54 to 59 of the Access to Justice Act 1999 Section 55(1) of the Access to Justice Act 1999 Section 8 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 Case Laws Tanfern Ltd v Cameron-MacDonald [2000] 1 WLR 1311 Re T (A Child) [2002] EWCA Civ 1736 Books Cullen, Pamela V., A Stranger in Blood: The Case Files on Dr John Bodkin Adams (Elliott & Thompson: London, 2006) 65 D Gavin L Bloom-Cooper and C Blake, The Court of Appeal. Suzanne Fullbrook. (Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2007) 43 M. Naughton, Rethinking Miscarriages of Justice: Beyond the Tip of the Iceberg (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) 25 M. Naughton, Criminal Cases Review Commission: Helping the Innocent? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) 24 A Sanders, R Young and M Burton. Criminal Justice, 4th Edition (Oxford: OUP, 2010) 662 E Catherine and F Quinn. English Legal System (9th ed.) (London: Pearson Longman, 2008) 43 M Naughton, Rethinking Miscarriages of Justice: Beyond the Tip of the Iceberg, (Palgrave: Macmillan, 2007) 32 Journals M Naughton, Factual Innocence versus Legal Guilt: The Need for a New Pair of Spectacles to view the Problem of Life-Sentenced Prisoners Maintaining Innocence (2008) Prison Service Journal, 177, 23 M Naughton, ‘How the Presumption of Innocence Renders the Innocent Vulnerable to Wrongful Convictions‘ (2010) Irish Journal of Legal Studies, 2 no. 1: 53. M Naughton, ‘The Criminal Cases Review Commission: Innocence Versus Safety and the Integrity of the Criminal Justice System’ (2012) Criminal Law Quarterly, 58: 207-244. R Nobles and D Schiff ‘Guilt and Innocence in the Criminal Justice System: A Comment on R (Mullen) v Secretary of State for the Home Department’ (2006) Modern Law Review 69 no. 1: 88. H Quirk, ‘Identifying miscarriages of justice: why innocence in the UK is not the answer’, (2007) Modern Law Review, 70 no. 5: 760. S Roberts ‘Unsafe’ Convictions: Defining and Compensating Miscarriages of Justice’ Modern Law Review (2003) 3: 450 N Taylor ‘Compensation for “miscarriage of justice”: Eligibility’ (2004) Journal of Criminal Law 68: 380. Woffinden, Bob. "The Criminal Cases Review Commission has failed", (2010) 322 The Guardian 30 S Roberts and L Weathered, ‘Assisting the Factually Innocent: The Contradictions and Compatibility of Innocence Projects and the Criminal Cases Review Commission’ (2009) Oxford J of Legal Studies 29 no. 1, 60 Websites K Campbell and M Denov ‘Miscarriages of Justice: The Impact of Wrongful Imprisonment’ (2010) JustResearchEdition no. 13 accessed 6 September 2012. Read More