Miscarriage of Justice in the Criminal Justice System

This essay explores the concept of miscarriage of justice in the criminal justice system, discussing its causes and implications. It highlights factors contributing to wrongful convictions, such as faulty forensic analysis and false confessions. The essay also examines the role of the court system in delivering justice and the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Examples of miscarriages of justice, including the Birmingham Six case and the William Herbert Wallace case, are provided to illustrate the impact of wrongful convictions on individuals and society.

Criminal Justice
Miscarriage

Contents
INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..............................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION...........................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES............................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
The criminal justice system can be defined as the combination of legal processes and
courts which deals with the crime. It is a system where the criminals are identified through their
crimes and then judged, detained and punished. The essential components of this system include
court system, law enforcement and the correction facilities. The court comprises of the judges
and officers who works on to render justice to the victim and punish the wrongdoer by hearing
on the case. The law enforcement agencies are entrusted with the task to ensure that legislations
are followed in the country and the correction facilities includes prisons and jails who hold the
suspects waiting for the trial. They are responsible for the programs which deal with
rehabilitation and probation of prisons (Robins, 2018). This essay covers about miscarriage of
justice and how it is dealt with.
MAIN BODY
The criminal justice system is mainly design to deliver the justice to all the people which
means that it protects the innocent and convict criminals thereby providing fair justice process in
order to help keep the law and order in whole nation. It is mainly aimed to keep the citizens safe
and without the criminal justice system, there might be violence, havoc, danger and theft but
through this system which comprises of law enforcement agencies, courts and correction, people
are free to travel, work, go out in the public securely and safely.
Justice is a very important part of every person’s life and the court system has been set up
in the nation with the sole purpose of regulating justice in the country. They are looked as the
instrument which safeguards the justice. The characteristic of the court helps in building the
relationship of trust between courts and common citizens. This relationship may get affected by
wrongful influence on court and the consequence may be miscarriage of justice. The burden of
this lies on the court itself. It is, in simple words, is called wrongful conviction which occurs
when the person is convicted for the offence and punished which they did not commit actually. It
may occur in both civil and criminal proceedings which also includes removal proceedings
(Larkin Jr, 2017).

The main factors which contribute to the miscarriage of justice includes the faulty
forensic analysis, misidentification by eyewitness, perjury or lies told by the witness, false
confessions by the vulnerable suspect, misconduct by the police, judges or prosecutors,
inadequate strategies of defense which was put forward by the legal team of defendant.
The concept of the miscarriage of justice have some important implications for the
standard of review in that, the court of appeal will only exercise often its discretion in order to
correct the plain error when the marriage of justice would occur otherwise. The risk of this is
cited often as the cause to eliminate death penalty. When the condemned person is executed
before they are even determined to have been convicted wrongly, the effect of the marriage of
justice is irreversible. And even when the wrongly convicted person is not executed and for years
it is in prison, it can have irreversible and substantial effect on that person and its family.
Therefore, the risk of miscarriage of justice is an argument against the long sentence such as life
sentence and cruel conditions of prison (Clausson, 2019).
The wrongful convictions have been appeared to be the first rightful arrest and the
subsequent convictions and include the public statement regarding the crime which has occurred
and the particular person or persons have committed that crime. The conviction then turns out to
be miscarriage of justice and then these statements are deemed to be ultimately false. In case
where many or large people are witness of miscarriage of justice unknowingly, the news
consuming public can develop the false beliefs regarding the nature of the crime itself. This may
also result in public believing falsely that such type of crime also exist or that certain kinds of
people tend to commit such crimes or that these crimes are prevalent commonly than they
actually are (Vijaykumar, 2018). Hence, the miscarriage of justice may mould ultimately the
popular belief of society regarding crime because the understanding of crime is construed
socially and it is being shaped by various factors other than the actual occurrence of it.
The mass media also plays an important role in distorting the perception of public of the
crime through over representation of many genders and races as victims and criminals. They also
highlight more of the invigorating and sensational kinds of cries as being newsworthy more. The
way news and media represents the issues relating to crime, it not only influence fear of crime of
society but also their belief regarding causes of criminal behavior and the desirability of
approach to the crime control. Thus, this ultimately have significant impact on public belief

regarding emerging forms of the crime like global crime, cybercrime and the terrorism. There are
also some unfavorable psychological effects on the person who is being wrongfully convicted for
any crime which significantly decrease their behavior of pro social after being sanctioned
wrongfully and this has negative effect on whole group and the extent of wrongful sanction
mainly varies between the societies (Muhamad, 2020).
Whenever any crime occurs and the wrong person is convicted for that crime, the actual
criminal or the perpetrator goes free and is free to commit other additional crime which includes
many violent crimes. In United Kingdom, I any person is jailed and its conviction is quashed is
eligible for the compensation for the time it was incarcerated. The statute limits the maximum
amount of compensation amount which is £1000000 for the person who is incarcerated for more
than ten years and £500000 for any other cases with the deduction of cost of prison cell and food
during that time.
Till the year 2005, the parole system in England, Northern Ireland and Wales assumed
that all convicted person are guilty and to be paroled, they were required to sign a document and
other things in which they have to confess for the crime for which they are convicted and
someone who refuses to sign it are obliged to spend more time in prison. Then some wrongly
convicted people refused to sign these documents for this reason so this system changed in the
year 2005 and began to parole the prisoners who just never admitted guilt (Munir, Abbas and
Arshed, 2020).
In a case, the Birmingham Six were the Irishmen, namely Gerard Hunter, Hugh
Callaghan, Richard Mclkenny, Patrick Joseph Hill, John Walker and William Power who in the
year 1975 were imprisoned and sentenced for the life imprisonment. They were falsely convicted
for the Birmingham pub bombing and their conviction was declared as unsatisfactory and unsafe
and also quashed by Court of Appeal in the year 1991, 14 March. These men were awarded
compensation later for the amount ranging between £840000 to £1.2 million. The Birmingham
bombing caused many deaths. The prosecution’s evidence was rested on three factors which
included the confession to which accused claimed that it has been coerced, second is forensic test
to which the accused claimed that it is unreliable and has been unsatisfactorily performed and
third is high circumstantial evidence like their link to the known Republicans. And on the basis
of these three evidence, all six men were found guilty. Then in an appeal, new evidence was

referred in the year 1988. The court released the six men on the basis of revelations that police
has fabricated the statements and there were also new uncertainties found in the quality of
forensic test. The outcome of this case has resulted in the establishment of Royal commission on
the criminal justice. In this the report was presented by the royal commission in the year 1993
which led to the enactment of Criminal Justice Act, 1995 that established criminal cases review
commission in the year 1997. The main purpose of this commission was to examine the criminal
justice system of UK and made recommendations regarding change in the system to increase the
efficiency of the system. It recommended the establishment of the independent body which
firstly will consider the suspects of miscarriage of justice and secondly, it will refer the
appropriate case to court of Appeal. As a result, under the criminal appeal Act, criminal cases
review commission was established the executive non- departmental public body to review
miscarriage of justice (Vashisht, 2019).
The English law has no means of correcting the perverse verdict where the defendant has
been convicted based on insufficient evidence. The appeals in UK are exclusively based on
errors of judges, new evidence or irregularities of jury. In a case, William Herbert Wallace was
convicted for the murder of its wife in their house. Its conviction was overturned later by Court
of Appeals- Criminal Division and it was the first case in the legal history of Britain that an
appeal was allowed after the re-examination of the evidence. The facts of the case were that
Wallace went to Liverpool Central Chess club and received a message which requested it to
come to a address at Menlove gardens East at 7.30pm. So the next day, he went to that place but
was unable to find the address. He asked many passers- by regarding the direction but o one
could tell. After the search of 45 minutes, he returned home. The neighbors saw hat Wallace is in
the back alleyway and complaining that he is not gaining entry into the house rom front and back
as well so he tried the back door again which was now opened. When he went inside, he saw his
wife who was beaten to death in sitting room. Up to two week later of his arrest, Wallace made
two statements voluntarily but was never questioned by the police intensively. After the
investigation, the police was convinced that Wallace may murder his wife. The forensic
examination revealed that the attacker would have been contaminated with the blood of Julia so
they examined suit if Wallace but did not get any blood strains so police made the theory that
Wallace may be naked at the time of murder so the bath and drains were examined but no trace
of blood was found and the place was not used recently. At the trial, Wallace was charged with

murder but the appeal reversed the judgment and held that it is a huge miscarriage of justice and
held Wallace not guilty for the murder of his wife (Leahy, 2020).
Hence, it can be said that miscarriage of justice is the failure of court system in rendering
justice to the victim. The above mentioned cases are perfect examples for the same which led to
the establishment of the body which shall deal with the miscarriage of justice by considering the
suspect of the same and refer the case to the Court of appeal so that justice is rendered and the
number of wrongful convictions is lowered in number.

CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above essay that miscarriage of justice is a wrongful conviction
which can occur when the person is punished and convicted for the offence which it has not
committed. This may occur due to false confession, misidentification by eyewitness, faulty
analysis of forensic and many other factors. Delivering justice is a difficult task as it is the
responsibility of court to not just to deliver the judgment but also to provide justice to the court.
The judiciary is considered as the holder of rule of law and it is the one who has to decide as to
what is wrong and what right as the final bidder to the justice. The miscarriage of justice mainly
initiated turmoil in whole country and it also results in loss of public trust in the court system.
Hence, the English legal system tried to dealt with this but establishing the independent body to
review the miscarriage of justice and refer such case to courts.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Clausson, N., 2019. Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British
Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World's Most Famous Detective Writer. Clues. 37(1).
pp.105-106.
Larkin Jr, P.J., 2017. Mistakes and Justice-Using the Pardon Power to Remedy a Mistake of
Law. Geo. JL & Pub. Pol'y. 15. p.651.
Leahy, S., 2020. Female Sex Offenders in Ireland: Examining the Response of the Criminal
Justice System. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice. 36(4). pp.539-558.
Muhamad, M.M., 2020. Post-appeal avenues to rectify miscarriages of justice in the Malaysian
criminal justice process: reform options and the use of DNA evidence. Commonwealth Law
Bulletin. 46(4). pp.741-752.
Munir, R., Abbas, R.Z. and Arshed, N., 2020. DNA profiling and databasing: An analysis of
issues and challenges in the criminal justice system of Pakistan. Medicine, Science and the Law,
p.0025802420964318.
Robins, J., 2018. Guilty until proven innocent: the crisis in our justice system. Biteback
Publishing.
Vashisht, A., 2019. Natural Justice: A Jurisprudential Overview. International Journal of Law
and Jurisprudence, June (2019).
Vijaykumar, M., 2018. A Crisis of Conscience: Miscarriages of Justice and Indigenous
Defendants in Canada. UBCL Rev.. 51. p.161.