The barrister Felicity Gerry QC, who was lead counsel in the Jogee case, is critical of the watchdog’s approach to the cases. ‘The act of examining the jury’s verdict and seeking to infer findings of fact is fraught with difficulty and, arguably, unsatisfactory in an appellate system which relies upon the primacy of the jury’s verdict,’ it continued. ‘In the CCRC’s view, were juries required to give reasons, there would be considerably more certainty as to the safety (or otherwise) of any conviction reached under the “old” law.’Īccording to CCRC, it is ‘extremely challenging’ to demonstrate that the correct legal direction ‘would, in fact, have made a difference without first knowing on which basis the jury reached their original decision’. ‘Since the Supreme Court’s decision in 2016, only two convictions under the “old” law have been quashed by the Court of Appeal,’ the CCRC said in its new report.
The miscarriage of justice watchdog in its 2018 annual report reported that it received 103 applications based on the ruling.
It is the responsibility of this court to put the law right.’ Lord Neuberger handed down judgment saying: ‘This court is always very cautious before departing from a previous decision. The group highlighted its own problems reviewing joint enterprise cases in the aftermath of the 2016 Jogee ruling in which the Supreme Court held that the controversial law had taken ‘a wrong turn in 1984’. In a submission to the House of Lords’ Constitution Committee inquiry into COVID-19, the Criminal Cases Review Conviction (CCRC) argued that the pandemic has led to debate ‘whether small juries or trials in the absence of a jury may be a viable option’ to help clear the backlog of cases.
The miscarriage of justice watchdog has called for a review of the role of juries highlighting the absence of reasoning for verdicts as an impediment to progress on referring cases of those wrongly convicted under joint enterprise.
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