20 April 2006
Top criminal lawyers have labelled Home Office plans to reduce the compensation payments to wrongly convicted persons as “pointless”, “mean” and “an insult to innocent people”. Chairman of the Criminal Appeal Lawyers’ Association, Campbell Malone said the Home Secretary’s decision to scrap discretionary payments would lead to “individual cases of extreme hardship”, whilst Franklin Sinclair, former chair of the Criminal Law Solicitors‘ Association spoke out against proposals to introduce a ‘cap’ on statutory payments of £500,000. Charles Clarke also stated that those who successfully appeal against convictions within court time limits will receive no compensation, as this should be considered as part of the legal process
“I don’t think there is anything worse than being convicted of something you have not done,” said Sinclair. “Every day is precious – how do you justify not paying compensation to someone who may have spent up to two years in prison whilst waiting for an appeal to be heard? There also shouldn’t be a limit on payments, as you are not just being compensated for loss of earnings, but a loss of life.” Malone said the removal of the discretionary scheme was “appalling”. He added: “This scheme is in place to cover unusual situations where the system has failed, it is quite wrong to remove it. This, coupled with capped statutory payments will increase the temptation to litigate, so, for example, more expert witnesses will be personally sued if people are wrongly convicted.”
The Home Secretary justified the reforms on the basis that the discretionary scheme, which led to £2m in compensation being paid out in 2005, was becoming “increasingly anomalous”, and the cap on payments under the statutory scheme would “bring it into line with compensation paid to victims of crime”. “The Government is committed to putting victims’ interests at the heart of the criminal justice system. These changes will save more than £5 million a year which we will plough back into improving criminal justice and support for victims of crime,” he said.
(Source: Solicitors Journal)