Miscarriages of JusticeIt has become common for government ministers to claim that miscarriages of justice are a thing of the past. As Tony Blair said in 2003 “Today in Britain in the 21st century it is not the innocent being convicted. It's too many of the guilty going free”. Yet in our experience, there are more people wrongly convicted now than ever before. The reasons for this are not hard to understand. For 20 years governments have competed to be the toughest on crime. When the current government came to power in 1997 this process accelerated. There has been an unending succession of Acts of Parliament reducing protections for the defendant and making it easier to get convictions. Among the main provisions leading to miscarriages of justice are:
Huge incentives have been created within the criminal justice process for those who give evidence for the Crown including new homes, freedom from prosecution and cash inducements of various kinds. In such a context miscarriages of justice can occur all too easily. Added to all this, the media have campaigned relentlessly against “criminals”. No-one anticipates the effect this has on juries until it happens to them. Then it is too late. Hickman & Rose has an enviable record of success at appeal, based on thorough analysis of what goes wrong at trial, the relentless search for new evidence and extensive experience of presenting cases in the Court of Appeal. |