The Criminal Cases Review Commission is a non-departmental public body set up in England in March 1997 following the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice, itself a continuation of the May Inquiry. It aims to investigate possible miscarriages of justice in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The Commission assesses whether convictions or sentences should be referred to a court of appeal, but they are not bound by the Human Rights Acts 1998, and are most certainly in violation of Article 13 of the ECHR and that they are free at the moment to choose whether a conviction obtained by fooling a jury with (for example) junk science, should go back to the court of appeal.

In many cases there has been no appeal, because the Court of Appeal withheld transcripts requested by an appeal barrister, and so an application at the single judge stage could not progress with perfected grounds. The CCRC though, class this as though there has been an appeal - when in fact the system has prevented an/any appeal from being properly progressed. In one case from 2008 we understand that this was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights as of June of 2013, but that the EC wrongly believe that their is an effective remedy in the United Kingdom and returned the application.

Where there is no Right of Appeal under the British system, legal aid funding limitations and domestic Article 13 deficiencies, the only avenue to an effective remedy may rest with the United Nations, where Article 8 renders this case an ongoing violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As of April 2018 the day-to-day running of the Commission is the responsibility of the Chief Executive, Miss Karen Kneller. Karen is supported in this by Mrs Sally Berlin, Director of Casework Operations, and Mr Ian Brooks, the Director of Finance & Corporate Services. Together Kneller, Berlin and Brooks make up the Senior Management Team.

The Commission has three non-executive directors who are members of their Board. According to their website, they are not employees of the Commission and sit on the Board in order to provide independent advice, constructive challenge and scrutiny of its decisions and performance. As of April 2018 their non-executive directors are: Mrs Caroline Corby; and Mr Jonathan Baume. 

Decisions about whether or not cases can be referred are always taken by one or more of our Commissioners who are chosen for their professional experience and ability to make important decisions in complicated matters. Cases are generally passed to Commissioners on a ‘cab rank’ basis. The Commissioners decide all types of cases. Commissioners are appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of the Prime Minister meaning that David Cameron and Theresa May are in the recent case referral decision making tree along with Her Majesty, grand patron of the Royal Masonic Benevolent Institution.

Each Commissioner is appointed for a period of up to five years and can, if re-appointed, serve for a maximum of ten years for long-term steerage of alternative agendas.

BROTHERS IN ARMS - Just how far will a brother mason go to help another mason? Will he sacrifice the mental state of a family member to help the police and his council cover up a cover up. Just how far up the justice chain does masonic influence extend. Does it include Judges, the CPS and Criminal Cases Review Commission. In this book by Jane Roe, the machinations of the justice system are explored where police corruption and lack of transparency reach as far as the High Court. Based on a true story, the names and locations of the characters have been changed to protect the victim of a frame-up who was sent to prison for rape, where the girl making the claim was still a virgin. The British justice system is so corrupted that the Crown Prosecution Service still managed to gain a conviction for their brother mason where one of the most corrupt police forces in England needed to cover up their cover up of council planning frauds. There is no right of appeal in the United Kingdom in denial of Article 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998, because the criminal justice system has been pared to the bone to counter prolific Government borrowing that the nation cannot afford. The Criminal Cases Review Commission openly discriminate between cases where incompatibility in referrals are commonplace, signaling favours for masonic chums in the provinces. Copyright © cover design Horse Sanctuary UK 20 October 2018. All rights reserved.

NEW APPOINTMENTS 2017

Five new Commissioners were appointed for a term of 5 years starting in September 2017:

Rachel Ellis

Ms Ellis is currently an Ombudsman with the Financial Ombudsman Service working within the jurisdiction division of the Service. She has worked in a number of areas within the Service and has been involved in training adjudicators, external liaison and making policy decisions. Ms Ellis previously worked as a criminal barrister and was instructed to act on behalf of both the prosecution and defence in a comprehensive range of criminal proceedings. She represented a diverse range of clients including youths and clients with mental health problems and appeared in sensitive cases including sexual offences. During her time in Chambers, Ms Ellis also undertook a secondment with the Regulatory Team at the Nursing and Midwifery Council. This involved regularly appearing for the Council in complex and sensitive cases before the Conduct and Competence Committee and the Health Committee.

Jill Gramann JP

Mrs Gramann currently serves on the Sentencing Council of England and Wales as the lay judicial member. She has been a Justice of the Peace since 1990 and has held a number of posts within the magistracy including three years as a bench chairman. She was also a Non-Executive Director of Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust until July 2017 with specific portfolio responsibilities for adult mental health and patient and carer experience. Mrs Gramann has previously held posts as a Director and Trustee of disability charities BILD (British Institute of Learning Disability) and SCOPE. By profession, Mrs Gramann was a market research consultant with her own business for 30 years providing strategic guidance to both public and private sector organisations.

Linda Lee

Ms Lee is a solicitor specialising in regulatory and disciplinary law at national law firm Radcliffes Le Brasseur. Ms Lee is a Past President of the Law Society of England and Wales (2010-11) and is a Law Society Council Member. She has held various key roles at the Law Society including Chair of the Representation and Legal Affairs and Policy Board and Regulatory Affairs Board and is currently the Chair of the Regulatory Process Committee. She is a member of the Audit Committee and the Access to Justice Committee. She is also Chair of the Solicitors Assistance Scheme which provides advice and assistance to solicitors facing disciplinary proceedings. Ms Lee is a legal chair for the Taxation Disciplinary Board, the Phone-paid Services Authority, the Family Health Services Appeals Unit of the NHS Litigation Authority and the General Medical Council. She is also an independent panel member for HS2. She lectures and writes on legal and regulatory issues and is a director of the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting.

Jennifer Portway

Ms Portway is currently an Independent Member and Panel Chair on the Parole Board, a Specialist Member of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Appeal Tribunal, an Independent Member of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (Fitness to Practise hearings) and a Volunteer Member on Police Misconduct Hearings. Ms Portway is a solicitor (currently non-practising) and has previously held posts with the Crown Prosecution Service including Senior Crown Prosecutor and Senior Policy Adviser (national lead for victims and witnesses).

Robert Ward CBE QC

Mr Ward is a barrister who has had an extensive career as a Government Lawyer. Most recently Mr Ward led the legal branch at the Ministry of Defence during a period of substantial change and expansion. His specialism is national security law and he has participated in its development on a national and international basis. Prior to entering government service, Mr Ward was in independent practice and taught Criminal, Constitutional and Public Law at the University of Cambridge. He is co-author of a leading text book on sexual offences law and practice.

Statistics as of 15 November 2011:

50,000 total applications to the Commission
568 cases still open
600 actively being worked on
19,076 cases completed (including ineligible) with 395 referrals to the Court of Appeal
675 cases heard by the Court of Appeal (320 quashed, 134 upheld, 4 reserved)

The Commission has been criticized for the length of time it takes to examine cases, and the way it produces its statistics. Bob Woffinden wrote in The Guardian in 2010 that the Commission counts as a "quashed case" any case it refers on the basis of sentence alone, if the sentence is subsequently changed, and any case where alternative convictions are upheld. He also wrote that it counts its successes in terms of numbers of individuals, rather than cases (so that cases involving multiple convictions are counted more than once), and that some of its work involves overturning relatively minor convictions. According to Woffinden, between 2005 and 2010 the Commission referred only seven major cases to the Court of Appeal, including one (the case of Sean Hodgson) in which the prisoner's lawyers worked directly with the police and prosecution to secure an uncontested appeal.

DAILY MAIL 3 DECEMBER 2017 - CCRC IGNORES NEW EVIDENCE

Five men serving prison terms of up to 24 years for a £53 million drug smuggling plot have lost their bid to appeal – despite fresh scientific evidence suggesting the version of events presented by the prosecution at the trial was ‘impossible’.

Almost four years after The Mail on Sunday published the first of three investigations casting doubt on the convictions, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which has the power to refer possible miscarriages of justice to the Court of Appeal, has decided to take no action. 

In doing so, it is rejecting expert evidence that the fishing boat reputedly used to pick up holdalls packed with cocaine from the English Channel never actually reached the spot where the bags might have been dumped. The CCRC has also disregarded fresh evidence from a recently retired senior drugs crime investigator, who found ‘serious discrepancies’ in the surveillance records.

The CCRC’s 78-page ‘Statement of Reasons’, seen by this newspaper, makes clear that it did not commission any of its own scientific tests, nor seek advice from a single independent expert to confirm or deny the men’s claim of innocence.

The statement’s author, CCRC commissioner David Smith, said he did not consider any such tests were necessary. In his view, there was still no ‘real possibility’ that the men might win an appeal.

Isle of Wight crab and lobster fisherman Jamie Green, who owned the 39ft Galwad-y-Mor, was jailed for 24 years in 2011, as was casual labourer Zoran Dresic and Mr Green’s lifelong friend, Jonathan Beere. Crewmen Danny Payne and Scott Birtwistle got 18 and 14 years respectively.

According to the prosecution, Green sailed his boat into the middle of the Channel in a Force 8 gale on the night of May 29, 2010. There, it was claimed, the Galwad-y-Mor crossed the wake of the Oriane, a Brazilian container ship, just after 12 rucksacks containing a total of 560 lb of cocaine had allegedly been thrown from its deck.

Working in total darkness, with waves up to 30ft, Green and his crew were said to have retrieved the bags in about two minutes. Then, after spending ten hours fishing, they returned to the inshore waters of the island’s Freshwater Bay, where, in broad daylight, the crew threw the bags back into the water. They were found next morning by another fisherman, and retrieved by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

As this newspaper has previously revealed, defence solicitor Emily Bolton consulted a leading marine GPS expert, who concluded the closest the paths of the boats came to each other was 175 metres (190 yards). Moreover, he said the Galwad-y-Mor could not have sailed to the spot where the drug bags were subsequently found anchored to the seabed because the water is too shallow.

‘This new analysis, based on evidence that was not available at the trial, undermines the case put to the jury,’ Ms Bolton said. ‘It should have persuaded the CCRC to refer it to the Court of Appeal.’

She said the commission’s decision not to was ‘baffling and perverse’ – and said it had shown ‘a lack of understanding of the technical evidence’.

But the CCRC said the new evidence was unlikely to make a difference to the outcome because another expert, Mik Chinnery, had already told the trial jury it would have been ‘impossible’ for Green’s crew to collect the bags from the water, yet they still found the men guilty by majority verdict.

However, Mr Chinnery testified about the difficulty of locating and recovering the bags from the heaving sea, not the course of the boats.

But Mr Smith told The Mail on Sunday he disagreed that the trial expert was making a fundamentally different point. He added: ‘We didn’t consider the new analysis would make a difference.’

Mr Smith also rejected a new report from the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, which says currents on the night would mean any bags thrown from the Oriane would have floated away from the Galwad-y-Mor, not towards it. There were ‘too many variables’, Mr Smith said, and if the Galwad was ‘in the vicinity’ of the Oriane, then it was possible she did pick up the drugs.

As for the claim that the water was too shallow in Freshwater Bay, Mr Smith said it was uncertain whether the anchor to which the bags were tied was heavy enough to stop them moving from deeper waters where the boat could have sailed. He rejected suggestions that the CCRC should have conducted tests to settle this, saying: ‘I don’t think it can be established that the anchor didn’t move.’

The CCRC also rejected fresh evidence from Don Dewar, a retired senior anti-drug officer who found ‘inexplicable gaps’ in the surveillance records used to convict the men. Mr Smith agreed there were discrepancies, but not enough to show they had been fabricated.

The CCRC’s decision comes amid mounting concern at the plummeting rate at which it is referring cases for appeals – down from more than three per cent of applications five years ago to just 0.7 per cent last year – as it faces budget pressures.

Ms Bolton said the men now plan to challenge the CCRC decision with a judicial review.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5140343/Criminal-Cases-Review-Commission-ignores-new-evidence.html

A SYSTEM IN FREEFALL:

Set against a background of increasing pressure to gain convictions, many police officers fail to investigate fully for fear of finding inconvenient truths, which they will then have to pass to a defence team during the discovery process. The CPS are hungry to improve numbers on sexual offences.

Of course it is vital to protect children from abuse, and every effort should be made to provide a safe environment for them. The problem is the rising numbers of innocent men that are only being freed after months or years in prison, for something they didn't do. It's not possible to recover time or a stained reputation. Whereas, a girl making false allegations, gets away Scott-free - no loss of reputation, livelihood, etc. A clear imbalance in the system.

The fact is it is all too easy to put an innocent man behind bars where a blunderbuss serious of charges, often used in sexual assault cases, make it all but impossible to mount a defense with alibis for specific events claimed. Put that together with carefully crafted circumstantial evidence and pick a vulnerable target, then all you have to do is play the Juries emotions. As the statistics show, a Jury will convict on the unsupported word of a girl. There is no need for a witness to an event. Just a story where a man is alone with a girl and there is opportunity. That this will happen to any family man with children at some time is inevitable.

In most cases an allegation grows like a pyramid, once the system kicks in. Unfortunately, at each stage of the process, the allegation grows as it is passed from one person in the chain to another, each adding their own interpretation and filling in the blanks, so to speak.

Where an allegation has been made (which is often the case) by a young girl or boy who may find him or herself in an uncomfortable family situation, perhaps a combination of loneliness, stress from school work, social stresses from friends, or lack of them, not feeling important or feeling ignored. Sometimes just being bored or mischievous, or simply bearing a grudge - the child will often pander to the attention they are suddenly receiving, and sometimes they are simply bunny boilers, out to ruin someone they feel abandoned by...... The case below should perhaps fall to be considered as to the above..... Although, specialist advice will help us to understand, should that be forthcoming.

CCRC OFFICERS 2018

 Jonathan Baume - Sally Berlin - Ian Brooks - Liz Calderbank - Caroline Corby - Rachel Ellis - Richard Foster - Jill Gramann

Justin Hawkins - Celia Hughes - Andre Katz - Karen Kneller - Stephen Leach - Linda Lee - Alexandra Marks

Sharon Persaud - Jennifer Portway - Andrew Rennison - David James Smith - Robert Ward

RISE IN NUMBER OF INNOCENT VICTIMS WHO CANNOT OBTAIN JUSTICE

A quite worrying statistic, is the number of men freed on Appeal, having been convicted by a Jury of 12 members of the public. Clearly, then the decisions reached by many Juries are flawed. To a high degree it's a game of chance relying on the mood of the jurors and the relative skills or degrees of effort, of the prosecuting and defending barristers.

Even more worrying, is the fact there is no automatic right of Appeal. An innocent man must remain in prison relying on friends and family, and hoping some new evidence will come to light to give any chance of an Appeal. The odds against this happening are hundreds to one against. Which raises the question as to how many innocent men are behind bars with no safety net due to Legal Aid restrictions and funding rules which sometimes steer overworked solicitors to provide a less than satisfactory defense.

Trials are too important to be decided by juries. That is the tagline on films such as Runaway Jury, where it is shown that Juries can be bought. In fact most juries just want to get home as soon as possible. Once elected, the foreman or woman usually steers the verdict to what he or she would like to see. The others simply follow the lead. That is what one juror told us recently, and she is entitled to he opinion.

ANATOMY OF A STITCH UP - FLOW CHART

Ian McEwan's novel 'Atonement' (fiction)  -  Jane Roe's 'The System' (based on a true story)

THE SYSTEM

This is a fictional work inspired by a true story, where the names and locations have been changed to protect the identities of the characters. This book reveals flaws in a System, which is geared to gaining convictions, rather than providing support to innocent victims of false allegations, who often spend several years in prison before they are vindicated and sometimes only obtain justice after any prison sentence has been served.

A - Z of Sussex officers

Joe Edwards

Ken Jones

Paul Whitehouse

Sarah Jane Gallagher

Sir Ken Macdonald QC

Another man's life ruined by Bunny Boiler - February 2008

LINKS and REFERENCE

The policies of Labour's Harriet Harman, Minister of State for Women, are designed to raise conviction rates is sex related cases, regardless of evidence. This has resulted in many more appeals and innocent men being freed, having been convicted on little or no evidence. It begs belief that such cases are brought, considering the irreversible harm caused to the victim, in these case the person defendant.

In many cases (number unknown) innocent men are rotting in jail, since there is no appeal for them unless fresh evidence surfaces, which may only happen once a bunny boiler repeat offends. Otherwise, there is no justice for men. A point overlooked by Harriet in her rush to up statistics for voters.

Hammer Lane, Vines Cross, East Sussex, 3 March 2004 - Gypsy stakeout