BBC Radio 4 PM - "Justice On Trial" - Police & CPS Corruption and Failures

Описание: “PM” with Eddie Mair, 17.00 6th June 2018 BBC Radio 4.

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Eddie Mair: Justice on trial;

Vox 1: The police are failing to investigate objectively; that means that all proper and reasonable lines of enquiry are not being made.

Vox 2: Each and every failure is a human body that was treated badly, and some of them – I know for a fact some of them – will be in prison now for crimes they didn’t commit.

EM: We’ll have the full story, also ….

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EM: With the BBC News now, Diana Speed.

Diana Speed: The Crown Prosecution Service has revealed that dozens of cases involving rape and sexual assault have been halted after vital evidence was withheld from defence lawyers. A review was launched in England and Wales earlier this year when a series of cases collapsed. The head of the Criminal Cases Review Commission which examines suspected miscarriages of justice told this programme the findings were extremely worrying. Clive Coleman reports:



Clive Coleman: Forty-seven rape or sexual assault cases were stopped: five where prosecutors found disclosure failure to be the main issue; forty-two where disclosure failure was deemed to be an important issue. Fourteen defendants had to be released from custody as a result. In response, the CPS intends to review charging decisions and identify electronic evidence earlier in the process. This, on top of a national disclosure improvement plan announced in January [2018], which increased training and a number of “Disclosure Champions”. But today’s review after only a tiny fraction of the total number of cases prosecuted but the CPS annually.

DS: Companies who took part in the ….

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EM: It’s five-past-five. Towards the end of last year, 22 year old Liam Allan was suddenly in the news: he’d been accused of rape. His trial collapsed when it emerged crucial evidence had not been disclosed to the defence as part of the trial process. Liam Allan, it turns out, was not alone. Isaac Itiary, accused of child rape, was cleared at court with prosecutors offering no evidence after the police said material had not been given to the defence team. The trial of Samson Makele, also accused of rape, was stopped when his defence team had found evidence that had not been disclosed. A student, Oliver Mears had the case against him dropped days before his trial after he spent two years on bail. After all of that a review was set up by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, the CPS. Today it found forty-seven cases which were stopped because evidence had not been shared with the defence. Alison Saunders is head of the CPS:

Alison Saunders: The key findings from this report is [sic] that sometimes we charge threshold cases too early, that we need to be more robust in that, and we have already started work so our charging division is already sending more case