The chief executive of the troubled miscarriage of justice watchdog spent thousands of pounds of public money on luxury French hotels, according to a Guardian investigation. It is reported that Karen Kneller attended Insead business school in Fontainebleau where Helen Pitcher, the former chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) held multiple positions.
One staff member told the Guardian’s Emily Dugan that there was a clear ‘conflict of interest’ in Kneller being sent on courses at an institution the former CCRC chair was involved in ‘at a location that is vastly more expensive than very similar courses available in the UK’. According to the Guardian, Kneller’s stays included a director’s course whose fees are ‘currently advertised at more than £21,000 for 10 days’ teaching over three trips’; a week-long programme on ‘digital disruption and innovation’; and a three-day ‘Leading from the chair’ course in 2021, the fees for which are currently £7,500.
The Guardian revealed earlier this month that Kneller had been accused of attempting to ‘sanitise’ an independent review into her organisation’s handling of the Andrew Malkinson case. Kneller was director of casework when the CCRC undertook what Chris Henley KC in his review of the handling of the Andrew Malkinson case described as ‘very poor’ work on the first application to overturn his conviction.
Meanwhile there is increasing pressure on the CCRC to respond to concerns over the safety of the conviction of Lucy Letby in light of last week’s dramatic press conference – and conerns over its ability to do so (see the Mail on Sunday). As reported, the watchdog took the unprecedeted step of issuing a press release on receipt of the CCRC’s application which seemed to both downplay concerns and manage expecations as to a prompt response. The CCRC said that it was ‘not possible to determine how long it will take to review this application’. It was critical of ‘speculation and commentary… from parties with only a partial view of the evidence’ in Letby’s case. Matt Foot, co-director of the charity APPEAL, told the paper: ‘The CCRC piously seeking to close down questioning of a conviction shows it is anything but independent.’
The former CCRC commisisoner David James Smith struck a more cautious note about what he called the media ‘circus’ around the Letby campaign in the Indepdnent on Sunday. ‘In legal circles, it is frowned upon for practitioners to appear too often in the media and there is an obvious tension in Letby’s case, that the more the appearances feed the public interest, the more distressing it is for the families of the babies who died or were harmed. One parent has already spoken out this week describing the Letby event as a “publicity stunt”,’ he wrote; adding ‘media scrutiny will put pressure on my former colleagues at the CCRC, and just at the time they need it least’.
