The Innocence Network UK, an umbrella group for the university-based Innocence Projects set up by law students to investigate miscarriage cases, has  called for an overhaul of the CCRC and its referral powers. Dr Michael Naughton, director of the Innocence Network and a long-standing CCRC critic, argues that the CCRC is hamstrung by the statutory straitjacket of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 that requiring only cases with the “real possibility” of the conviction being overturned to be referred to the court of appeal. This weekend the campaign group United Against Injustice meets to discuss the need for ‘a concerted united campaign that will bring together prisoners, ex prisoners, families, academics, MPs, and celebrities to challenge the legitimacy of the CCRC’.

You can read a full version of this article by Jon Robins in the Guardian HERE.

You can read Julie Price and Dr Dennis Eady, of the Cardiff Law School Innocence Project  on the case for reform HERE.

‘The court of appeal needs to consider potential miscarriages of justice rather than rigid rules, and to abandon the absurd notion of jury infallibility and the grossly unfair requirement for ‘new’ evidence or argument: in many cases, the evidence needed was there all along.’ Julie Price and Dr Dennis Eady