News In Focus
4 July 2007
Report indicates faith in criminal justice system
The majority of cases that come before the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission did not involve a miscarriage of justice, according to the Commission’s annual report published this week.
The report covers the period from 1 April 2006 to 31 March 2007.
The Commission was established in April 1999 to review alleged miscarriages of justice in Scottish criminal convictions and sentences independently of government and the Crown. It has the power to refer cases back to the High Court if it believes a miscarriage of justice has occurred.
As at 31 March 2007 the Commission had received a total of 887 cases and had issued final decisions in 841 of these, 67 of which were referrals to the High Court. The Commission issues a short news release after a case has been referred to the High Court, naming the applicant in question, details of his or her conviction and sentence.
The referral figure does not include the case of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi. Publishing the results of its three-year investigation last week, the Commission referred the case back to the High Court as it had found a number of points of evidence which indicated a possible miscarriage of justice.
The past year has been a very busy one for the Commission, according to its chairman, the Rev Dr Graham Forbes.
Meeting targets
He said: “We have continued to exceed our key targets in terms of processing and concluding case reviews.
“Our annual report for 2006-07 clearly sets out our achievements for the year as well as highlighting key statistics and trends in the review process. We continue to find that there has been no miscarriage of justice in the majority of cases we review, which is reassuring.
“For those cases we refer back to the High Court, the Commission has demonstrated the importance of its independent review in the attainment of justice.
Chief executive Gerard Sinclair added: "The Commission is presently reviewing cases more speedily and more effectively than ever before. I am pleased to report that, through hard work and improvements in efficiencies, we have been able to end the year without a backlog of cases, and each case accepted for review is now immediately allocated for investigation.
"We have managed this at a time when we were completing our work on the Lockerbie review. While this one case may have attracted the vast majority of the media attention, the other 100 plus cases we receive each year are equally as important to the Commission, in terms of our time and effort."
The report is available free of charge from the Commission at 5th floor, Portland House, 17 Renfield Street, Glasgow; tel 0141 270 7030; email: info@sccrc.org.uk .