SUB-HEADING: "This 17-year-long wrongful imprisonment scandal has lessons for all levels of the criminal justice system."
That is disturbing enough.
Now it may get more Kafkaesque still.
If Mr Malkinson receives financial compensation for his wrongful conviction and his years inside – for which, on the face of it, he has a strong claim – an assessor will be expected to deduct “saved living expenses” to reimburse the prison service for the cost of his board and lodging. It is jaw-dropping that an unjustly imprisoned person can be charged in this way for their own wrongful imprisonment.
Most troubling of all in the longer run, though, is that Mr Malkinson was repeatedly let down by every level of the criminal justice system.
He protested his innocence from the very start. Greater Manchester police did not believe him; they now face a possible damages claim.
But nor was he believed by the Crown Prosecution Service or by a jury.
Nor by the Criminal Cases Review Commission – on two separate occasions.
If campaigners led by the Appeal charity had not taken up his case – interviewing witnesses, taking the police to court to disclose documents and commissioning DNA tests – Mr Malkinson might still be in prison.
Those who have listened to his interviews this week will have been struck by the measured language he has been able to summon to tell his shocking story.
But it is a tale of shame for the criminal justice system nonetheless. He deserves much more than an apology – though the CCRC has not even offered that.
Miscarriages of justice are thankfully rare, but their numbers are not negligible. In the 26 years since the CCRC was given the task of reviewing alleged miscarriages and referring them to the court of appeal if there is a “real possibility” that a conviction or sentence would not be upheld, it has referred 814 such cases, of which around 70%, a high proportion, have led to acquittals.
Mr Malkinson will now be added to that number.
But in fact he was badly let down by the CCRC, which failed to make full use of the DNA database that could have cleared him sooner.
The review commission’s press release gives the impression that Mr Malkinson was freed because of its own work. Campaigners tell a different story. Appeal says that the CCRC was incompetent and acted as a barrier to justice.
A case like this demands a policy response as well as individual compensation.
With suspiciously good timing, the Law Commission, which advises government on legal reform, launched a wide-ranging review of the law and practice on criminal appeals this week.
The review is expected to take two years. If so, it would perhaps fall to a government headed by an experienced criminal lawyer, Sir Keir Starmer, to implement its recommendations. That can’t happen too soon. But proper amends to Mr Malkinson should be made even sooner."
The entire editorial can be read at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66347594
A taste: "In 1997, convictions against cousins Vincent and Michael Hickey for the murder of Carl Bridgewater at a farm near Stourbridge in 1978 were found to be fundamentally flawed. Michael Hickey was subsequently awarded £1.02m and Vincent Hickey £550,000 but, in each case, a 25% deduction was made from the part of their compensation that reflected loss of earnings while in prison. This was because of living expenses they did not have to pay while in prison."
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
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