Miscarriages of Justice Flashcards
Definition
A miscarriage of justice is defined
as a wrongful conviction
whereby a person is
punished for a crime they did not commit.
When the process or end product of
a legal system could be said to
have been unfair or unjust
Major causes
They have traditionally arisen in Britain for one or other five main reasons that are discussed below.
- Inadequate work by defence lawyers
- Improper pressure was placed
- on a defendant by
- the police to confess to crime
- The fabrication of evidence
-
Failure by the prosecution
to disclose information
relevant to the defence - Uncorroborated evidence
This means that there are two main types of ‘wrongful conviction’.
One is where the defendant (whether actually guilty or not) is convicted unfairly;
in most of these cases, the lack of fair trial makes it impossible to judge whether the defendant is guilty or not.
The other is where an innocent defendant is convicted (whether fairly or not).
The conviction through unfair means of those perceived or known to be actually innocent is the type of miscarriage of justice that gives rise to most public concern.
Inadequate work by defence lawyers
A person may be unfairly convicted
because the lawyers defending him or her
failed to perform their job effectively.
However,
the Court of Appeal has traditionally
been reluctant to recognise mistakes
by defence lawyers
as grounds for appeal.
Improper pressure was placed on a defendant by the police to confess to crime
Police pressure,
which may include the use or threat of violence,
may result in a person
confessing to a crime he or she
did not commit or
result in
witnesses giving false evidence.
The 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act potentially aggravated this problem, both by eroding the right to silence and by failing to require corroborating evidence to support confessions.
The fabrication of evidence
This activity is usually referred to as ‘planting’ evidence and is undertaken to ensure that a watertight case exists against a person or persons suspected by the police of having committing a crime.
The practice arose
because the police firmly believed
that a suspect was guilty of an offence
but did not have convincing evidence to persuade a jury of that person’s guilt.
It may be linked to other forms of police malpractice, including failing to follow up vital leads in an inquiry when these are unhelpful to the case the police are making against a suspect.
Failure by the prosecution to disclose information relevant to the defence
The task of investigating criminal offences is performed by the police.
In theory all material relevant to the prosecution’s case should be disclose to the defence who lack the resources to carry out a detailed investigation of their own.
The failure to do this may severely prejudice the ability of defence lawyers to defend their client(s), especially if the police suppress evidence that is potentially damaging to the prosecution’s case.
The non-disclosure of evidence by the police has been the basis of some high-profile miscarriages of justice – including those of Gerry Conlon and Stefan Kiszko.
Uncorroborated evidence
The courts are generally sceptical concerning the weight which should be put on uncorroborated evidence.
On occasions, the opinion expressed by expert witnesses has formed the basis of the prosecution’s case and resulted in a person’s conviction.
The potential weaknesses of this situation were revealed in 2004 in connection with several cases related to cot deaths – Sir Roy Meadows and Sally Clark.
Convictions can be ‘quashed’ by the Court of Appeal if a defendant is found to have been denied a fair trial, as in cases where the police fail to disclose evidence that undermined the prosecution case.
Such malpractice, if adjudged severe enough, is said to render the conviction ‘unsafe’, and to amount to a ‘miscarriage of justice’.
Curb this problem
In liberal democratic states that adhere to the rule of law it is important that citizens should be treated fairly and impartially by the courts, and that adequate mechanisms should exist to ensure that,
if mistakes are made, they can be speedily rectified.
The appeals procedure plays a vital role in this process, but it does not necessarily offer an effective safeguard against all miscarriages of justice, and the experiences of the ‘Birmingham Six’, the ‘Guildford Four’ and the ‘Cardiff Three’ indicated the weakness of the appeals procedure.
The former consisted of six persons who were jailed for life in 1975 in connection with IRA bombings during the 1970s.
In 1991 they were freed when before the Court of Appeal accepted that the convictions were unsafe.
It was alleged that police officers who had investigated the case fabricated evidence and that prosecution lawyers withheld evidence that was vital to the defence.
The ‘Guildford Four’ were four persons who were given life sentences in 1975 in connection with bombings carried out in Woolwich and Guildford.
They were freed by the Court of Appeal in 1989 because improper methods were used by the police to obtain their confessions.
The ‘Cardiff Three’ were wrongly jailed in 1990 for the murder of a Cardiff prostitute.
Fifteen years later the police arrested the person who had been responsible for this crime.
It was alleged that the original conviction was obtained by the police manipulation of vulnerable witnesses to give false evidence.
What measures need to be taken to restrict their occurrence
?
