Justice in the dock
01 January 1991
Justice in the dock
artdoc August=1992
Within minutes of the release of the Birmingham Six in Marcb,
Home Secretary Kenneth Bakcr announced that there was to be a
Royal Commission into Criminal Justice. CARF questions whether
this is a serious attempt to look at the inequities in the
criminal justice system.
The Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven, the Birmingham Six, the
West Midlands serious crime squad cases- in all these instances
British `justice' has been found to be gravely at fault. The
Tottenham Three, the Bridgwater Four, Tony Parris and many othcr
people who we do not even hear about - these are all cases where
justice is believed not to have been done. What does the Home
Secretary do? Publicly apologise for the former and refer the
rest to the Court of Appeal? No. He sets up a Royal Commission,
to be headed by a businessman and academic, Lord Runciman.
The panel includes no one with personal experience of being
unjustly treated by the criminal justice system, no lawyer who
has been directly involved in fighting an iniquitous verdict.
There is a senior policeman, a former Home Office civil servant,
three professors, three little-known lawyers - and the only
non-white is Ushar Prasha. And these people will be serviced by
Home Office officials. Royal commissions are held out as being
impartial and objective. But their very terms of reference can
refute this. When Kenneth Baker announced the Runciman
commission, his first concern was that it should examine
,securing the conviction of those guilty of criminal offences',
rather than `the acquittal of those who are innocent'. What is
more, the commission is considering curtailing the right of
silence. Regarded with hostility by the police - and already done
away with in Northern Ireland - the right of silence is
considered by defence lawyers as a fundamental right of accused
people and a protection for the innocent. Far from being
impartial, the last royal commission on criminal procedure,
prompted by another grave miscarriage of justice, was hijacked
by the police. The end result - the Police and Criminal Evidence
Act - increased police powers while failing to include many of
the safeguards which at least a minority of the commission had
thought essential. That commission also failed to address some
fundamental issues. Despite powerful evidence of the racism
pervading the criminal justice system, this got hardly a mention
in the commission's final report. And now, of the 88 questions
drawn up by the Runciman commission to circulate to those giving
evidence, only one mentions race - and that is in relation to the
balance of juries. Yet anti-black and anti-Irish racism are
manifest in the criminal justice system, and in many miscarriages
of justice.
Royal Commissions are also used by government to divert
embarrassing questions, in the hope that, by the tune they report
- Runciman is meant to do this in two years - public concern and
anger will have died down. But it will not. And the families and
friends of those unjustly jailed are not prepared to wait for
another report before securing their release.
A case to answer
After 25 years in prison, Kayode Orishagbemi has the dubious
distinction of being the victim of the longest lasting
miscarriage of justice in British legal history. In 1966, he was
convicted of murder, although the pathologist who examined his
alleged victim was unable to say how she died. He was convicted
mainly on the evidence of a co-accused, Evelyn Akolo, and was
sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he
serve a minimum of 20 vears. He has been in prison ever since.
In March 1967, less than a year after the trial, Miss Akolo
retracted her evidence and said that for f3O she had agreed with
another prosecution witness to give perjured evidence. But the
Court of Appeal dismissed his application for leave to appeal,
and a police investigation concluded that the pol