Is the CCRC fit to decide on Lucy Letby’s appeal?

Whatever happened to the likes of the BBC’s Rough Justice and Channel 4’s Trial and Error? Why did human rights organisations such as Liberty and Justice stop campaigning on behalf of UK prisoners wrongfully jailed? Why are there fewer MPs plugging away on behalf of constituents they believe to have been victims of miscarriages of justice? All this activity seemed to be wound down after the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) began its work in 1997. Outsiders were no longer needed to look into the criminal justice system, many believed, now that we had a one-stop shop for prisoners protesting against their convictions for crimes they insist they did not commit.

It comes as something of a novelty, then, to find the New Yorker suddenly questioning the safety of the convictions of two of Britain’s most high-profile prisoners. In quick succession in recent months, the US magazine has published in-depth inquiries into the case of Lucy Letby, convicted for the murder of seven babies and for attempting to kill a further seven, and that of Jeremy Bamber, convicted in October 1986 for the murders of his adoptive parents, Nevill and June Bamber, his adoptive sister, Sheila Caffell, and Sheila’s six-year-old twin sons, Daniel and Nicholas. Both articles raised significant questions about the reliability of the evidence at their trials and the justness of their convictions. Letby and Bamber were each given whole-life tariffs and will die in prison unless they are able to overturn their convictions at the Court of Appeal.

The last time Americans took such an interest in the British justice system was with the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six, all of whom, of course, went on to be acquitted. These cases helped to bring widespread awareness that the criminal justice system was convicting innocent people and then failing to provide the necessary mechanisms for them to overturn those convictions.