A family's fight for their son's freedom
Reading Time: 7 minutes When the Westminster Commission on Miscarriages of Justice published the findings of its inquiry into the Criminal Cases Review Commission (‘In the Interests of Justice’) on 5 March 2021, it made over 40 recommendations. Whilst the vast majority of these were directed at the CCRC, 9 of the recommendations made...
Reading Time: 5 minutes Deconstructing a wrongful conviction is a painstaking process. Often, once all the tripwires that floored the original jury have been carefully exposed, a case will require extensive investigative efforts to reveal previously unseen evidence that can exonerate the individual, or at least raise serious doubts about the veracity of the...
Reading Time: 5 minutes One of the many problems plaguing the Criminal Cases Review Commission – the body set up to review potential miscarriages of justice in England and Wales – is the sheer length of time that it takes them to consider any given application. To help address the issue, the House of...
Reading Time: 8 minutes Proving your innocence in most cases requires finding some ‘fresh evidence’ that wasn’t available at your original trial, a challenge that stops many a wrongly convicted person in their tracks. Unless you are one of the lucky few able to acquire pro bono support, conducting a private investigation from behind...
Reading Time: 4 minutes In 2019, a Westminster Commission made up of a growing number of MPs concerned by the rising tide of wrongful convictions across England and Wales was formed across party political lines in search of solutions. Establishing an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Miscarriages of Justice (APPGMJ), they launched a public inquiry...
Reading Time: 4 minutes Samuel Alexander disappeared in 2009. His body was later found buried at his family home. Despite a lack of DNA, eyewitnesses, or murder weapon – and with no cause or date of death – his only son Mark was convicted of murder. A law graduate, Mark has been investigating his...
Reading Time: 5 minutes This article could just as easily have been called ’Ten ways the Daily Mail were misled by the crown prosecution service’, because in many ways the press isn’t to blame for the inaccuracies and calculated falsehoods recited in the prosecution’s opening speech – which they perhaps naturally, albeit uncritically, relied...
Reading Time: 17 minutes Mark Alexander writing on the resurgence and growth of innocence projects in universities Originally published in Criminal Law and Justice Weekly – Issue 23 (2016) 180 JPN 411 – 415 [1] Over the past 9 months I’ve been trying to get a sense of the health of the innocence project...
Reading Time: 8 minutes A shorter version of this article was first published on the Justice Gap The announcement that Innocence Network UK (INUK) had disbanded in September 2014 came as a real shock to those of us on the inside still fighting for justice. There had been no indication to those of us on...
Days Wrongfully Imprisoned
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