11 May 2011

New compensation ruling for miscarriages of justice

A Supreme Court ruling widening the scope for compensation claims by “miscarriage of justice” victims could see the likes of Sion Jenkins and Barry George receiving compensation.

Supreme Court (reuters)

By a majority of 5-4 the UK Supreme Court has laid down a landmark precedent that could result in a number of compensation claims from victims of “miscarriages of justice”.

Two men, who claimed that they were wrongly refused a claim for compensation after having murder convictions overturned, won their appeal. Raymond McCartney and Eamonn McDermott spent 28 years in prison for murder and IRA membership before having their convictions quashed in 2007.

The rule over compensation in cases of “miscarriages of justice” prior to today’s judgement was that the victim must be “completely innocent” of the alleged crime, meaning that convictions overturned due to procedural malpractice or cases where the evidence no longer proved the test of “beyond reasonable doubt” fell outside of the parameters for a successful claim.

However the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the right to statutory compensation under the Criminal Justice Act of 1988 includes “cases where the evidence against a defendant is so undermined by a new or newly discovered fact ‘that no conviction could possibly be based upon it’.”

Supreme Court Justice Baroness Hale described how previous interpretation of the law had appeared to contradict UK legal theory.

Innocence as such is not a concept known to our criminal justice system. Justice Baroness Hale

“Innocence as such is not a concept known to our criminal justice system. We distinguish between the guilty and the not guilty. A person is only guilty if the state can prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt,” she said.

“If it can be conclusively shown that the state was not entitled to punish a person, it seems to me that he should be entitled to compensation for having been punished. He does not have to prove his innocence at his trial and it seems wrong in principle that he should be required to prove his innocence now.”

The Supreme Court decision also put in place an important rule to avoid any future lack of clarity. In a similar challenge from aircraft engineer Andrew Adams, who spent 14 years in jail before his conviction was “ruled unsafe”, the Supreme Court found that as his appeal had not been successful as a consequence “of newly discovered fact”, the decision fell outside the test for a right to compensation.

The vital evidence in this case had been available for use at the original trial but was not admitted to the court by his defence at the time.

Eric Metcalfe of Justice, who was permitted to intervene in the cases put to the Supreme Court, told Channel 4 News that the decision was a “sign of the strength of the Supreme Court. that we have finality of the law after seven years where this issue has gone back and forward.”

At least the innocent will not have to prove their innocence in order to be eligible. Eric Metcalfe, Justice

Mr Metcalfe also commented on the significance of the decsion: “Not every wrongly convicted person who deserves compensation will benefit from today’s ruling, but at least the innocent will not have to prove their innocence in order to be eligible.”

The issue of compensation for “miscarriages of justice” was originally raised in the House of Lords in 2004, with Lord Steyn championing the reading of the 1988 Criminal Act to apply to the “clearly innocent” and others, including Lord Bingham, expressing the belief that this should extend to cover “failures of the trial process”.

Now, with the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court as the highest authority in the land, the issue has been resolved. Eric Metcalfe says it may not please the Government that an extra pot of cash may be required during a period of austerity, but that it was clear “that if someone can claim for a loss of limb they should be allowed to claim for wrongful imprisonment”.

Barry George (reuters)

Barry George and Sion Jenkins

The decisions could have knock-on effects in relation to the high-profile convictions of Barry George and Sion Jenkins, both of which were overturned on appeal.

George served seven years of a life sentence for the murder of Jill Dando until his appeal in 2009, when witness statements were used to prove that the accused’s movements on the day raised significant doubts over his ability to commit the crime.

In 2010 it emerged the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had rejected a claim for compensation, a decision made by then Justice Secretary Jack Straw. Later in the year the High Court ruled that George had the right to a judicial review over the decision, which was postponed until the outcome of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the three above cases.

Sion Jenkins was jailed for the murder of Billie-Jo Jenkins, who was in his foster care in 1997. Again, in 2010, the MoD revealed that Jenkins had been refused compensation for wrongful imprisonment.

Under the new precedents, these two high-profile claimants may yet be able to receive substantial damages for “miscarriages of justice”, dependent on the examination of the evidence used to quash their convictions and whether it was due to “new or newly discovered” evidence.