Preface

In September 2010, at a two-day seminar on wrongful convictions at the National Institute of Justice, Washington DC, the first author witnessed an impassioned critique of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (‘the Commission’) that sowed the seeds for this book. With only forty or so participants, most of them US academics, criminal justice practitioners, and staff at the Department of Justice, it was a restrained event, with several presentations and time for discussion. Given the primary focus on the US, contributions from the Chair of the Commission and a lay member of its sister Commission in Scotland were a welcome counterpart to debates about the efficacy of innocence projects across the US. But while most talks were met with polite questions and comments, the presentation by the Chair of the Commission, elicited an astonishing onslaught from the only other English academic present. The Commission’s Chair, Richard Foster, had explained to those present that it reviews possible wrongful convictions in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland and refers back to the Court of Appeal (‘the Court’)1 cases in which it considers there to be a ‘real possibility’ that the Court will deem the conviction to be unsafe. While the talk was informative, it was also unremarkable: a description of the aims of the Commission and a summary of the numbers of cases received and the proportion referred for fresh appeals. The critic’s impassioned outburst claimed that for some applicants at least, the Commission was a failing and unaccountable body that should not be the model for reform elsewhere. He attacked its rationale and remit, and claimed that there was an unacceptably low proportion of deserving cases referred back to the Court. His most intriguing point was the reason he adduced for this alleged failing: an accusation that the Commission simply did not care about innocence. Later, as experts from New Zealand and Canada told of their countries’ interest in the Commission as a model for reform of their own post-conviction review procedures, he took further opportunities to diminish the Commission’s apparent strengths.

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