The front door crashes open. It’s just gone 5 a.m. There are feet pounding up the stairs. As you stumble out of bed, you’re taken aside. You hear the words that you have heard so many times before on TV: ‘You don’t have to say anything…’. The neighbours’ curtains twitch as, head bowed, you’re placed in the backseat of a police car. You have nothing to hide. You have faith in the criminal justice system – but your nightmare is only just beginning.
As a lawyer specialising in criminal defence for twenty years, I have news for you: many of the people I represent are not guilty. How sure can any of us be that the police will realise when they have taken a wrong turn? That the CPS will decide not to take the matter any further? That the jury will find sufficient doubt to outweigh their ‘no smoke without fire’ prejudice?
It has been more than a quarter of a century since scandalous miscarriages of justice – such as the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six – shocked the public out of its complacency about the supposed infallibility of our courts. Widespread concern led to a royal commission and fundamental reforms. Such reforms never fixed the problem, and it would be naive to think that they ever could.
As practitioners in our criminal courts, we witness at first hand the frailties of the justice system. This book is being published at a time when an underfunded system is creaking. Unprecedented pressures on the police and prosecution, swingeing cuts to the Ministry of Justice’s budget, not to mention two decades of frozen legal aid rates for defence lawyers have all contributed to a growing crisis.
Should the aim of the criminal justice system be to ensure that all guilty people are convicted, even if that means a few innocent ones go down? Or should it strive to protect the innocent at all costs, even if that means letting a few that are guilty slip away? Both options involve ‘miscarriages of justice’, but the presumption of innocence favours the latter over the former.
Sadly, that presumption has been under heavy fire over the last two decades from ambitious politicians and a press quick to be outraged, but reluctant to understand.
The cases that feature in this book should send shivers down the spines of every law-abiding citizen. The increasing focus on convicting the guilty instead of protecting the innocent means that we may soon all have cause to fear the dawn raid.
Rod Hayler
Old Bailey Solicitors