Author Archives: Carole McCartney

Australian teenager’s conviction overturned: re-trial ordered.

An Australian youth, 15 at the time of the offence, was convicted of ‘inciting’ a ‘king hit’ that killed a 21 year old at the Maitland Show in 2009. Among other irregularities, the 17 year old who had actually been the one to hit the victim – was given a sentence discount for testifying against the 15 year old boy. The conviction has now been declared a ‘miscarriage of justice’ and the youth will be re-tried. Read more here:

Acquittal over Maitland Show death

Italy: A Legal system in crisis?

The legal system in Italy is renowned as having ‘difficulties’. These are laid bare in this article, explaining how Italy’s justice has almost ground to a halt, weighed down with too many cases, too many solicitors and massive backlogs. A glimpse of the issues was shown to the world via the famous Amanda Knox and Ralph Sollecetio case, but this is just the tip of what appears to be a very big iceberg:

  • There is a backlog of 3.4million criminal cases;
  • 84million Euros was paid out last year in compensation for miscarriages of justice and delays;
  • a further 46million Euros was paid to people unjustly imprisoned…

read the full story here…

Insight: Overloaded justice system ties Italy in knots

Second serious DNA ‘error’ in UK made public.

Hot on the heels of the Adam Scott case where DNA contamination at LGC labs in England led to an innocent man being charged with rape, (see post here… Review of convictions after DNA contamination in lab discovered.) we now read that another error – this time a typographical error made during data entry on a computer – has led investigators on a wild goose chase for more than a year in a murder inquiry. The revelations in the case of Gareth Williams, whose death still remains a mystery, has led to further comments on the problems with the privatisation of forensic science in the UK, as well as the risk that miscarriages of justice are just as likely as ever, with faulty science often being to blame. Read here:

Calls for inquiry into ‘astonishing’ DNA error

and comment on privatisation from Prof Peter Gill:

Privatisation is a catastrophe, warns godfather of forensics

Listen here to Michael Mansfield QC warning that miscarriages of justice in England and Wales are NOT a thing of the past:

Michael Mansfield: ‘Risk of miscarriages of justice as great as ever’ – video

Official inquiry finds error rate of 7% in prosecutions in England and Wales.

An official inquiry into prosecution standards by Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Inspectorate has found an error of ‘analysis or judgement’ in up to 7% of cases. In any one year, this can mean 60,000 cases with errors: either prosecutions that should not have been brought, or cases that have failed to continue to a prosecution. Such a significant error rate has serious implications for the effectiveness of the criminal justice system in England and Wales. Read a news report here…

Mistakes in one in every 15 criminal prosecution cases, report suggests

The official press release can be found here….  and the full report is here:

Thematic review of the CPS Core Quality Standards Monitoring scheme

Mixed news from Japan on wrongful convictions and death penalty

The Japanese Federation of Bar Associations has recommended changes to the law in death penalty cases, so that sentences must be unanimous. This recommendation comes in response to at least four wrongful convictions in death sentence cases postwar andwrongful convictions being reversed in recent

years. This interesting article however, does imply that unanimity among the judges will protect against wrongful convictions, which seems optimistic at best and hopelessly naive at worst. However, it may reduce the number of death sentences, which, while falling short of the ultimate goal: Japan’s abolition of the death penalty, will be some progress. Read more here:

Lay judge death sentences must be unanimous: JFBA

Two men exonerated in Fiji

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The Fiji Times Online is reporting that two men, convicted in 2007 of a murder and sentenced to life, were wrongly convicted after the real perpetrator, who acted alone, confessed in 2009. Read more here….

“Miscarriages of Justice and Australian Criminal Appeals – a public presentation

Australia’s Bond University have a talk on Miscarriages of Justice at The Faculty of Law on 22nd March, by

Dr Robert Moles on the
“Miscarriages of Justice and Australian Criminal Appeals – a failure of human rights and the ‘rule of law’.”

see more details and register here….

Cuts to Forensic jobs in New South Wales, Australia: Threat to justice

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Senior forensic scientists in New South Wales, Australia, are warning that the drastic cuts to the forensic science workforce in the cash-strapped state, will threaten justice. The workforce is being cut by almost a quarter, with police being asked to do primary collection of potential DNA. The State already has a significant backlog of cases where evidence remains to be tested. Claude Roux warns that with police submitting samples for testing, DNA may lose its context – a vital element in correctly interpreting DNA. Read more about the cuts here…

Justice miscarriage warning over forensic job cuts

Worrying report about competence of expert witnesses in UK’s family courts

A very worrying report into experts acting in cases at the family courts in England and Wales, reveals that up to 20% are not qualified, a third had no experience in mental health, and 90% were no longer in practice. Some psychologists were found to be writing reports on parents that they’d never met. The Family Courts are shrouded in secrecy but many cases result in children being removed from their families – many parents claim unfairly or on false or flawed evidence. Some have gone on to be convicted in the criminal courts. These represent miscarriages of justice largely hidden from our system. Read more and watch a video report here…

How Competent are Expert Witnesses? 

Review of convictions after DNA contamination in lab discovered.

A rape case has collapsed after LGC, a private forensic provider in England and Wales admitted that the DNA evidence had become ‘too contaminated’ to be used in evidence. Discovery of the contamination had led to calls for perhaps hundreds of convictions based upon forensic evidence to be reviewed. Read more here…

Forensics blunder ‘may endanger convictions’

UPDATE: This is headline news in the UK – read more on the fallout here….

Forensics firm investigated over DNA blunder in rape case

and here….

Probe after forensics contamination leads to trial collapse

and a video from Channel 4 news here…

 Serious conviction reviewed after forensics blunder.

 

New book on investigating miscarriages of justice in England & Wales

A new collection of essays on the investigation of alleged wrongful convictions in England and Wales has been released and is now available to download here…

Article on shocking Indian (in)justice system

Reporting on the tale of a man wrongly imprisoned in New Delhi, this article highlights some of the terrible problems with the Indian criminal justice system, including the prolonged delays experienced by nearly all those arrested. In this case, it took fourteen years for the suspect to be acquitted of all charges. Read more here…

Five men have murder convictions overturned: police misconduct to be investigated.

Five men have today had their convictions for murder overturned in the English Court of Appeal. Convicted of murdering Kevin Nunes, killed in 2002, the case was referred back to the Court of Appeal after a re-investigation of the case by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. See news articles here…. and here….  The misconduct of a number of police officers is now to continue being investigated.

DNA Exoneration in 1992: now a DNA ‘hit’ on CODIS in 2012 could reveal real rapist.

In a development in Topeka, a 27 year old rape may be closer to being solved after a ‘hit’ on CODIS with DNA from the scene. Previously, in 1986, local man Joe Jones, was wrongfully convicted of the rape and spent seven years in prison before being exonerated by DNA evidence. His conviction was based primarily on eyewitness testimony, but Jones convinced lawyers at the Kansas University Defender Project to take his case. In 1992, lawyers were able to obtain DNA testing, which excluded Jones as the rapist. At the time, Jones was just the seventh person in the country to be exonerated by DNA evidence.

More on the story here…

27 years after Topeka rape, DNA databank finds match to potential suspect

Indigenous prisoners in Australia: 9 out of 10 have significant hearing loss

New research into the hearing of Indigenous prisoners has found that a shocking 94% have significant hearing problems. This is compounded by language difficulties that mean that many are not able to hear, nor understand, criminal justice proceedings. This, in a country where a QUARTER of the prison population are Indigenous Australians, (from a prevalence of approx. 2.5% of the general population). Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders suffer many injustices, being arrested and imprisoned wrongly is a significant one. Read a summary here….

Hearing loss hits NT indigenous inmates

 

Recent DNA case shows that DNA may be ‘infallible’ but police and prosecutors are not.

A very interesting article looks at a recent English case where prosecutors attempted to convict a man solely upon DNA evidence – and failed. The article goes on to discuss other cases (incl. in the US) where DNA has not proven to the ‘silver bullet’ to a conviction and gives reasons for doubt about unshakeable faith in DNA evidence. The comments after the article are also an interesting read! read the article here….

The case against DNA

Genetic profiling was once hailed as a magical tool to catch criminals. So why is it now in danger of being discredited?

Closure of the UK’s Forensic Science Service: 3 hour parliamentary debate

There was a debate in the House of Commons on Monday evening (28th February 2012), lasting three hours, on the closure of the Forensic Science Service. The FSS is due to complete it’s closure at the end of March 2012 but the closure has caused significant controversy. You can read the Hansard report on the debate (which will have to be continued later this week) here….  (scroll down to column 81 for start of debate). More news as it happens –  I will try and summarise the debate when I have had time to read it all!

Witnesses ‘bullied’ into lying in miscarriage of justice want convictions overturned

The fallout from the infamous ‘Cardiff 3’ miscarriage of justice in Wales continues. After the collapse of the trial against eight police officers when vital evidence went ‘missing’ before being found later, the witnesses in the original trial who have since been convited of perjury, now want their convictions overturned as they too were ‘victims’. see BBC story here:

Lynette White trial: witnesses want convictions quashed

Thousands in UK given criminal records ‘in error’

ImageFreedom of Information requests by The Telegraph have revealed that the Criminal Records Bureau has labelled at least 20,000 people wrongly as criminals, potentially robbing them of the opportunity to get jobs in teaching, nursing and working with children. Many of the errors come from inaccurate information held on the Police National Computer. Such errors can have a huge impact on people’s lives. Here is original news story: Thousands wrongly labelled as criminals. and some commentary: ‘Inaccuate records ‘regrettable’. Whilst not major miscarriages of justice, the inaccuracies do impact on people and point to major problems with the accuracy of police information, and their dealing with sensitive and vital details on criminals.

UK deaths in custody higher than admitted and police watchdog ‘ineffective’.

ImageAn independent inquiry into deaths in custody in England and Wales has revealed that the police are able to ‘ignore’ those deaths in their custody if the person was not officially ‘arrested’ at the time of death. This means that many high-profile deaths are not counted as deaths in custody. There is a news report on the findings here:

Rate of deaths in custody is higher than officials admit

This comes as the Deputy Chairwoman of the police watchdog: The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) calls the body ‘ineffective’:

The IPCC carries out its own investigations into less than 1 per cent of all complaints, leading to accusations that the procedure remains “police investigating the police”. A third of its investigators are also former police officers.

See the full story here:

Police watchdog admitted system was ineffective