Casework
Between 1957, when JUSTICE was founded, and 1997, when the Criminal Cases Review Commission was established, we took up many miscarriage of justice cases.

Many of the cases we dealt with might otherwise have gone unnoticed. They raised important issues such as the right to silence, the difficulties involved in identification and confession evidence, and the need to safeguard against oppressive police questioning. The availability of new evidence was a key aspect of many these cases.

Our successes led to many convictions being set aside and contributed to changes in law and practice.

Some of our landmark miscarriage of justice cases included those of Michael and Patrick McDonagh, Paul and Wayne Darvell, John McGranaghan, Mary Druhan, Jacqueline Fletcher, Andrew Evans, Peter Fell and Ashley King.

We have taken a number of cases to the European Court of Human Rights. Weeks v UK and Thynne Gunnell & Wilson v UK raised human rights issues in relation to discretionary life prison sentences and resulted in the introduction of oral parole hearings in the 1991 Criminal Justice Act.

Hussain v UK resulted in the introduction of oral parole hearings for HMP prisoners and in the loss of the Home Secretary's powers over release in these cases.

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