The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is the statutory body responsible for investigating alleged miscarriages of justice in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.[1] It was established by Section 8 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 and began work on 31 March 1997.[2] The commission is the only body in its area of jurisdiction with the power to send a case back to an appeals court if it concludes that there is a real possibility that the court will overturn a conviction or reduce a sentence. Since starting work in 1997, it has on average referred 33 cases a year for appeal.
From 31 March 1997 to 30 September 2017, the commission referred 634 cases back to appeals courts, or almost one case for every eight working days (see casework statistics below). Those referrals came from a total of 21,780 cases closed during that period, meaning that the commission has referred for appeal around 2.91% of the applications it has considered. Of the cases it has referred, approximately 66.1% have succeeded on appeal.[3]
The cases referred for appeal by the commission tend to come from the most serious end of the criminal spectrum; just over 25% of referrals have been for murder convictions, almost 12% have been for rapes, and 8% have been for robberies. The rest relate to a mixture of other offences, mostly serious and indictable-only.
The Criminal Appeal Act 1995, which created the commission, requires it to consider applications regarding convictions from both the Crown Court and magistrates' courts.[2] About 90% of all applications received, and 95% of the commission's referrals, relate to Crown Court cases for which the appellate court is the Court of Appeal. Magistrates' court cases are appealed in the Crown Court.
The commission currently receives around 1,500 applications a year. Applications are made in writing by people with criminal convictions or by their representatives. It is not necessary to have a lawyer to apply to the commission, but around half of all applicants are assisted by a lawyer.
Applications can relate to a conviction, a sentence, or both. Around 85% of the commission's referrals relate to convictions, and 15% to sentences. A small handful of cases have been referred for both conviction and sentence.
The commission is essentially a post-appeal organisation, and applicants to it almost always need to have appealed, or at least sought leave to appeal, before the commission can agree to review their case. In some cases, where there are exceptional circumstances, the commission can review a case in the absence of a prior attempt to appeal.
In order to refer a case for appeal, the commission usually has to identify new evidence or a new legal argument that makes the case look significantly different. This evidence or argument must not have been considered at the time of the trial, at the initial appeal, or in an earlier application to the commission. Again, there is an "exceptional circumstances" caveat that allows the commission to refer cases with no new evidence or argument, but such instances are extremely rare.
The commission was the subject of a Justice Select Committee inquiry from 2014 to 2015.[4] The inquiry received 47 written submissions and took oral evidence from 14 people.
The commission is an independent non-departmental public body funded by way of a cash grant from the Ministry of Justice. It is based in Birmingham and has around 90 staff members, plus Commissioners.[5] Its budget for 2016–17 was around £5.4 million.
Scotland has its own legal system, and there is a separate Scottish CCRC.[6]
Casework statistics
The CCRC started work in April 1997. Between then and the end of November 2019 it has:
Referred 676 cases
Of the 658 cases where appeals have been heard by the courts, 442 appeals have been allowed and 203 dismissed
593 cases are currently under review at the Commission and 138 are awaiting consideration.
So far we have received a total of 25,819 applications (including all ineligible cases) and completed 25,087 cases.
The difference between the total number of CCRC referrals heard by the appeal courts and the number of outcomes recorded is accounted for by cases where the appeal proceedings have been heard but the judgement is awaited and a number of cases that were referred by the CCRC but the appeal was abandoned.
CCRC casework statistics and other performance related data are regularly updated here.Archived 16 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine
Background
Before the creation of the CCRC, the only resort for a case that had already been to the Court of Appeal (or the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal) was a direct appeal to the Home Secretary or the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Only these officials had the power to order the court to hear a case again. This power was limited to cases tried on indictment, and only four or five cases were referred each year from around 700 applications. The power was also reactive in that the secretary could considered the issues raised by only applicants or their representatives, and could not investigate further or seek new grounds for appeal. A source of frequent criticism was that the same person responsible for the police could control whether or not a conviction was overturned.
In the 1970s, a series of convictions were later found to be illegitimate: those of the Guildford Four (1974), the Birmingham Six (1975), the Maguire Seven (1976), and Judith Ward (1974). These cases featured a mixture of false confessions, police misconduct, non-disclosure, and unreliable expert forensic testimony. An additional factor affecting the decision-making during the investigation and prosecution of these cases was their high public profile, resulting in pressure to obtain convictions and restore public confidence.
The weaknesses in the criminal justice system exposed by these cases led to the establishment of a Royal Commission on Criminal Justice in 1991. Its mandate included considering whether changes were needed in the arrangements for considering and investigating allegations of miscarriages of justice when appeal rights have been exhausted. Evidence was gathered over a two-year period. The Royal Commission published its report in July 1993. It concluded (adopting the view expressed by Sir John May in his inquiry into the Guildford and Woolwich bombings) that the arrangements for referring cases back to the courts were incompatible with the constitutional separation of judicial and executive powers. The recommendations of the Royal Commission led to the Criminal Appeal Act of 1995, which established the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Bob Woffinden wrote in The Guardian in 2010 that he believed the CCRC should stop counting certain cases as a "quashed case", such as when only a sentence is changed, or any case in which alternative convictions are upheld. He also objected to it counting its successes in terms of individual people rather than cases, and to the CCRC overturning relatively minor convictions.[7] The commission's response to this criticism was to refer to its case work statistics which show, as mentioned above, that just over 25% of its more than 600 referrals have been for murder convictions, almost 12% have been for rapes, and 8% have been for robberies and the rest relate to a mixture of other offences, mostly serious and indictable-only. A number of the cases Woffinden himself worked on were also overturned due to the CCRC, such as that of Sion Jenkins and Barry George.[8][9][10] In the case of James Hanratty, Woffinden successfully campaigned for the CCRC to refer the case to the Court of Appeal, only for new DNA tests to prove his guilt and cause the rejection of his appeal.[11][12] As of 2024, the CCRC had helped quash more than 100 miscarriages of justice in the preceding three years.[13]
The first governing body was composed of a Board of 15 Commission Members. The first chairman was Sir Frederick Crawford.[14] Contrary to common opinion, it is independent of the government and not a government organisation.[15] It is independent of the police, the courts and governments and any political body.[15] The commissioners are appointed by the Crown and also the CCRC's own independent board.[15]
Impact of austerity
In 2018, Jon Robins wrote in the New Law Journal that the commission had been underfunded by the government's austerity measures, noting that for every £10 that the commission could spend on cases in 2008, it now only has £4, and it referred only 12 cases to the Court of Appeal in 2017.[16] The CCRC received £7 million from the MoJ in 2003/4 and £6.5 million in 2009/10. In 2017/18 its income dropped to £5.6 million. Applications to the commission have increased, from 885 in 2003/4 to 1,439 in 2017/18. It is feared that cuts to legal aid and failure to disclose evidence have increased the risk of miscarriages of justice so the commission is more needed than it was in the past.[17]
Despite this, as of 2023 the CCRC's target is to complete a minimum of 85% of cases within 12 months of receipt of the application.[18] This target had previously been 36 weeks but was revised as this target had been successfully and consistently achieved in 2021/22.[18]
Praise
The CCRC was the first organisation of its kind in the world, and The Guardian noted that several high-profile prisoners "owe their freedom" to the CCRC, such as Barry George, Sally Clark and Sion Jenkins.[9] Others who died before they could be cleared were able to be posthumously exonerated due to the CCRC, such as Derek Bentley.[9] Winston Trew, one of the Oval Four who were exonerated due to the CCRC in 2019, said that "had it not been for the work of my case officer, Mrs. Anona Bisping, at the CCRC, in putting together and submitting an excellent of Statement of Reasons to the Court of Appeal, my convictions may well not have been overturned. The role of the CCRC is not just necessary but vital to overturning miscarriages of justice."[19] An anonymous individual whose conviction in the Post Office scandal was overturned due to the work of the CCRC has stated "I have nothing but praise for the work the CCRC did for me and my ex-colleagues. If you are in a similar situation where you know you have been wrongly convicted, I urge you to contact them".[20] The University of Oxford social sciences department noted that, as well as Barry George, people such as a group of legal asylum seekers and refugees who narrowly avoided being wrongly deported in 2005 had been "spared" from miscarriages of justice "thanks to the Criminal Cases Review Commission".[21]
Speaking on the 2011 documentary Retrial by TV: The Rise and Fall of Rough Justice, which focused on the history of the programme Rough Justice that had been credited with contributing to the establishment of the CCRC in 1997,[22] High Court judge Mr Justice Sweeney commented that the commission "is undoubtedly a valuable extension of the system, particularly because it provides an independent, responsible and continuing safety net by which to catch potential miscarriages of justice and put them right".[23] The idea of a body like the CCRC had long been promoted by the organisation JUSTICE, which had been the inspiration and support for Rough Justice.[23] The 2011 documentary described the establishment of the CCRC as "the very thing" that JUSTICE and its leader Tom Sargent had been arguing for since the 1960s, and its creation was described as a "posthumous achievement" for Sargent, whose idea it originally was.[23]Rough Justice producer Simon Ford observed that "nearly everybody who was involved in making miscarriages programmes wanted a criminal cases review body", and that the CCRC's creation provided an official way of looking into miscarriages, which was "a great thing".[23] The presenter of Rough JusticeDavid Jessel became a commissioner on the CCRC after it was founded, feeling like others that the introduction of the CCRC had "fixed" the justice system and that there was no more need of television programmes to raise questions about potential miscarriages.[23] After stepping down from his role after 10 years Jessel criticised the "caricature" of the CCRC as an "institutional villain".[24]
Commissioners have disagreed with claims that they are "too cautious" in making referrals by pointing to how they have in fact often allowed applicants to take their case to the Court of Appeal despite still suspecting them to be guilty, with former commissioner Ewan Smith saying in 2011: "In the four and a half years I've been on the Commission, I have only come across two people I believed to be absolutely innocent. In all the other cases I've sent back to the Court of Appeal, I've only been able to say I thought their conviction was unsafe. I have certainly referred people back who I personally believed were guilty".[9] In the case of Simon Hall, who had been supported by Rough Justice and was the first UK case worked on by an innocence project to be granted an appeal by the CCRC, the referred applicant's guilt was later conclusively proved when he admitted his crimes.[25][26] Prior to this Hall's supporters in the University of Bristol Innocence Project had accused the CCRC and Court of Appeal of not taking "claims of innocence seriously" and claimed that they hadn't been seeking "the truth of whether alleged victims of wrongful convicted are innocent or not".[27] David Jessel, the miscarriage of justice campaigner who was a CCRC commissioner between 2000 and 2010, described claims that the CCRC is not concerned with innocence as "nonsense".[28]
A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the jurisdiction.
A miscarriage of justice occurs when an unfair outcome occurs in a criminal or civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. Innocent people have sometimes ended up in prison for years before their conviction has eventually been overturned. They may be exonerated if new evidence comes to light or it is determined that the police or prosecutor committed some kind of misconduct at the original trial. In some jurisdictions this leads to the payment of compensation.
In the English and British tradition, the royal prerogative of mercy is one of the historic royal prerogatives of the British monarch, by which they can grant pardons to convicted persons. The royal prerogative of mercy was originally used to permit the monarch to withdraw, or provide alternatives to, death sentences; the alternative of penal transportation to "partes abroade" was used since at least 1617. It is now used to change any sentence or penalty. A royal pardon does not overturn a conviction.
David Harold Eastman is a former public servant from Canberra, Australia. In 1995, he was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Colin Winchester and was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. A 2014 judicial inquiry recommended the sentence be quashed and he should be pardoned. On 22 August of the same year, the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory quashed the conviction, released Eastman from prison, and ordered a retrial.
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government, established by the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995.
Actual innocence is a special standard of review in legal cases to prove that a charged defendant did not commit the crimes that they were accused of, which is often applied by appellate courts to prevent a miscarriage of justice.
David Greenhalgh Jessel is a British former TV and radio news presenter, author, and campaigner against miscarriages of justice. From 2000 to 2010, he was also a commissioner of the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Benjamin Geen is a British repeat murderer and former nurse who was convicted of killing two of his own patients and committing grievous bodily harm against 15 others while working at Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire in 2003 and 2004.
An innocence commission is a legal commission set up by a government for post-conviction review of cases, to try to ensure that wrongful convictions do not stand and that no innocent person is executed.
Robert Woffinden was a British investigative journalist. Formerly a reporter with the New Musical Express, he later specialised in investigating miscarriages of justice. He wrote about a number of high-profile cases in the UK, including James Hanratty, Sion Jenkins, Jeremy Bamber, Charles Ingram, Jonathan King, and Barry George.
Rough Justice is a British television programme that was broadcast on BBC, and which investigated alleged miscarriages of justice. It was broadcast between 1982 and 2007 and played a role in overturning the convictions of 18 people involved in 13 separate cases where miscarriages of justice had occurred. The programme was similar in aim and approach to The Court of Last Resort, the NBC programme that aired in the United States from 1957–58. It is credited with contributing to the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 1997.
Jeremy Nevill Bamber is a British convicted mass murderer. He was convicted of the 1985 White House Farm murders in Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex, in which the victims included Bamber's adoptive parents, Nevill and June Bamber; his adoptive sister, Sheila Caffell; and his sister's six-year-old twin sons. The prosecution had argued that after committing the murders to secure a large inheritance, Bamber had placed the rifle in the hands of his 28-year-old sister, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, to make the scene appear to be a murder–suicide. The jury returned a majority guilty verdict.
The innocent prisoner's dilemma, or parole deal, is a detrimental effect of a legal system in which admission of guilt can result in reduced sentences or early parole. When an innocent person is wrongly convicted of a crime, legal systems which need the individual to admit guilt — as, for example, a prerequisite step leading to parole — punish an innocent person for their integrity, and reward a person lacking in integrity. There have been cases where innocent prisoners were given the choice between freedom, in exchange for claiming guilt, and remaining imprisoned and telling the truth. Individuals have died in prison rather than admit to crimes that they did not commit.
Sam Hallam, from Hoxton, London, is one of the youngest victims of a UK miscarriage of justice after an appeal court quashed his murder conviction in 2012.
The British Post Office scandal, also called the Horizon IT scandal, involved the Post Office pursuing thousands of innocent subpostmasters for apparent financial shortfalls caused by faults in Horizon, an accounting software system developed by Fujitsu. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 subpostmasters were convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting based on faulty Horizon data, with about 700 of these prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. Other subpostmasters were prosecuted but not convicted, forced to cover shortfalls caused by Horizon with their own money, or had their contracts terminated. The court cases, criminal convictions, imprisonments, loss of livelihoods and homes, debts, and bankruptcies led to stress, illness, family breakdowns and at least four suicides. In 2024, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the scandal as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history.
Robert Brown is a Scottish man who spent 25 years in jail for a crime he did not commit, the murder of worker Annie Walsh.
The New Zealand Criminal Cases Review Commission is an independent Crown entity that was set up under the Criminal Cases Review Commission Act 2019 to investigate potential miscarriages of justice. If the Commission considers a miscarriage may have occurred, it can refer the case back to the Court of Appeal to be reconsidered.
Andrew Malkinson is a British man who was wrongfully convicted and jailed in 2004 for the rape of a 33-year-old woman in Salford, Greater Manchester.
Alan Hall was convicted of murdering 52 year old Arthur Easton in 1985 in what has been described as one of New Zealand's worst miscarriages of justice. In August 2023, the Government agreed to pay him $5 million in compensation, the largest nominal payout for wrongful conviction in New Zealand history.
Simon Hall was a British murderer who was the subject of a lengthy campaign by miscarriage of justice activists to overturn his conviction, only for him to go on to confess to the murder he was convicted of. Hall stabbed 79-year-old pensioner Joan Albert to death in her home in Capel St Mary, Suffolk in 2001, and was convicted of her murder two years later. Subsequently, the high-profile miscarriage of justice programme Rough Justice took up his case and aired a programme campaigning for him. Several MPs, Bristol University's 'Innocence Project' campaign group, his mother and his girlfriend Stephanie Hall were also involved in campaigning for him, and the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred his case to the Court of Appeal in 2009. However, the appeal court dismissed the appeal and he subsequently confessed his crime to prison authorities in 2013, before committing suicide in prison in 2014. His case was said to have gravely undermined the claims of many prisoners who claim their innocence and embarrassed miscarriage of justice activists, having proved that they had campaigned for a guilty man.
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