‘It’s far more difficult today for wrongly convicted prisoners to get exonerated’ – top solicitor

Martin Shipton

A solicitor who was made an honorary KC because of his work over decades on miscarriage of justice cases says it is now much harder for innocent people to get wrongful convictions overturned.

Glyn Maddocks, who is based in south east Wales, was instrumental in establishing the Centre for Criminal Appeals, now known as APPEAL, one of the first not for profit legal entities in the UK accredited by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority that assists the wrongfully convicted to obtain high-quality legal representation. APPEAL represented Andy Malkinson in his high profile exoneration in July 2023 and Glyn Maddocks represented Oliver Campbell, whose uniquely complex conviction was finally quashed by the Court of Appeal in September 2024.

Mr Maddocks has now made a series of podcasts with colleagues in another group he co-founded, the Future Justice Project, about miscarriage of justice cases.

In the final episode of the nine-part series called The Overturn, he talks about access to justice, stating: “In theory, it’s an even playing field between the prosecution and the defence.

“I say in theory only. The reality is far from that, sadly. The prosecution – police who are doing the investigation have a huge amount of resources to throw at cases. The defence has virtually nothing in comparison.

“It’s usually one solicitor and maybe a barrister and a small amount of legal aid, which is penny pinched most of the time. It’s extremely difficult. to ever think that there’s an equality of arms or that there is an even playing field. Despite what the theory says, it doesn’t work out like that.

“Lots of solicitors haven’t got the resources – they just haven’t got the bandwidth to be able to spend the time reading all the statements, looking at all the unused material, if there is any, going through all the prosecution evidence to actually put the defence that needs to be put.

“So it’s very unequal, which is why we’ve got a conviction rate of 80-something percent most years. It’s very much easier for the Crown, for the prosecution, for the police. who may have 50 people working on a case, to get what they need to get it across the line in front of a jury.

“And that isn’t fair. If it was an equal playing field, the defence would have unlimited resources to be able to go through everything and look at the evidence in a much more objective and impartial way, but they can’t.

“Justice is in theory only in this country, sadly.”

Asked how someone who found themselves wrongfully convicted could go about appealing that conviction, Mr Maddocks said: “Well, simply, you have to find someone who’s going to be prepared to help you. There’s an anecdotal story that I heard, which is probably true, where a person who was convicted wrongly went to his solicitor at the end of the trial and he said: “What do I do now? What happens? I want to fight this.”

And the solicitor looked at him and said: “Well, I’m out of this now because obviously legal aid is finished. I’ve done my job. But I understand there’s some sort of organisation, I’m not quite sure what it’s called, in Birmingham that might be able to help you. When you get to prison, they might give you an application form. You have to think about making an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. The CCRC will ask you about what fresh evidence you’ve got to prove that you didn’t do what you’ve been convicted of.

“That’s the hard bit. You can’t use anything that’s already been used at the trial. It would have to be something new, something fresh, and something that’s going to make a material difference. So a new witness coming along who can say that you were with them at the time or, in the case of some famous examples like Andy Malkinson, some DNA. But it took him 17 years, I think, to persuade the CCRC and then the Court of Appeal that that evidence was sufficient to justify his conviction being quashed.

“It is the most Herculean task imaginable. And whenever I have new clients, I say to them: ‘This is the most difficult thing you’ll have ever tried to achieve. This is climbing Everest, effectively, without any equipment. It is massive and most people fail. Most solicitors fail.”

Britain has the biggest prison population in western Europe, with 87,000 people in jail. Every year 1500 people, mainly prisoners, write to Birmingham saying they are innocent and of those, only between one and two percent typically in the last 10 years have made it back to the Court of Appeal. And then the Court of Appeal only overturns seven out of 10 cases.

Compensation

Mr Maddocks said: “And then if you successfully surmount all those hurdles, you now haven’t got a hope in hell of getting compensation.

“I was talking to one of my clients quite recently. I think his conviction was quashed in 2005. I said: ‘Paul, you were lucky.’ And he sort of swore at me, to be quite honest. He said: ‘What do you mean I was lucky? I was in prison for 25 years for something I didn’t do.’ I said: “Yes, but we managed to get your conviction referred by the CCRC, which is incredibly difficult, and you were lucky to do that. And then when you had your conviction quashed, you managed to get over a million in compensation.

“Had this happened to you recently, you wouldn’t have got either of those probably, in my view. The CCRC has got more restrictive. And since 2014, in your situation, you wouldn’t have got compensation at all. So you’d have probably been released eventually, but you would have not had your conviction quashed. So you’d still be on licence for the rest of your life. And you wouldn’t have got a penny from the state.”

Investigative work

Another factor making it more difficult to get convictions overturned is that unlike several decades ago, few news outlets are prepared to follow through cases where prisoners claim to be innocent.

As journalist Jon Robins tells the podcast, they’re happy to do stories when a conviction is overturned, but not put in the investigative work that would help prisoners prove their innocence.

All episodes of The Overturn podcast can be accessed here.