Miscarriages of Justice

That the criminal justice system is quite fallible is something that we all prefer to never think about. When a person is convicted, it is a rare individual who immediately wonders if the verdict is correct.

This outlook is, perhaps, a necessary one. In a world we broadly believe to be governed by laws and reason, a mindset which doubts the essential goodness of the mechanisms of justice would perpetually face a bleak vista. To doubt the institutions which are intended to bind together our disparate wishes into a coherent social whole is to necessarily feel somehow vulnerable, as if life is far more unpredictable - dangerous, even - than these institutions should allow.

And so we bumble through life broadly, unthinkingly, assuming that all is tickety-boo. Until there are those very public moments when an injustice is so blatant, has become so cancerous in the body of Justice, that it has to be expelled - leaving a delighted, angry and bewildered person being dumped on the street outside of the Court of Appeal.

Only then do we have the courage to unblinkingly, if fleetingly, somehow admit that bad things do happen and rarely by simple "error" or "mistake". The scales of justice are weighted against defendants and tipped resolutely against the convicted - rightly or wrongly. The sight of these rare public exonerations often pleases people, as if somehow they reveal that right will ultimately prevail, that our system of Justice will ultimately hold Truth to its bosom.

I don't see it that way. Having shared anger and many cups of tea with innocent men as we navigated through the carceral archipeligo, I had the comfort in the face of difficulty to know that I was, at least, guilty. The innocent do not, and their experience can only be a living nightmare.

Juries do make mistakes. But the path to Justice usually goes badly awry long before the tainted, mis-shapen and partial evidence reaches them. And it persists long afterwards, as the Court of Appeal seemingly resolutely twists and turns to salvage a conviction that all other eyes can see has so eroded in the face of examination that it has become an empty declaration.

The resources aimed at miscarriages of justice are minuscule, though the efforts of those involved are profoundly personal and often Herculean. At times such effort must appear to Sisyphean. And yet to those who daily suffer the indignities of being shut behind bars by screws who say "happiness is door shaped", the work of miscarriage of justice groups must sometimes offer the only sliver of sanity in a life which is otherwise a construct of the insane.

We forget, to our peril, that Justice is not only blind but profoundly human - and that means fallible, venal, stupid, malicious, lazy and corrupt. And to imprison the innocent is a wickedness that we all too often ignore in our rush to condemn those who believe have harmed us.

They deserve better. Our system of Justice deserves better. And, most of all, those innocents need us all.