Today was an interesting lecture, we learnt more about the innocence project which i know our lectures are particualrly involved in and it was thought provoking stuff. The idea of the innocence project is to rally behind people that have been framed for crimes with the aspiration to get them freed. I decided to read up on a few cases of miscarriages of justice and the the overall theme behind them was prejudice. In the 80's the IRA were rife and bombs were exploding up and down England, most notably in Guildford and Birmingham. It seems that anyone with Irish heritage was a suspect and maybe due to the lack evidence innocent Irishmen were the victims of police corruption, by officers keen to please the public.

The Guildford bombings took place on October the 5th 1974 and shortly after 3 men and a woman were convicted for the act of terrorism. However none of them committed the crime but were forced to sign confessions by police officers using torture techniques. After 15 years they were acquitted of the crime. 15 years is a long time to spend behind bars for something you had no involvement in which is why the innocence project is hellbent on seeing justice take place. I know of several cases they are currently working on and hopefully they manage to unearth new 'fresh' evidence that could mean an appeal can be launched.  I expect that the one thing that keeps these wrongly convicted criminals optimistic is the knowledge that they have a team of people behind them working tirelessly to see that they are released.

Afterwards we were asked to assume the position of a CCRC (Criminal cases review commission) official. This body was put together to stop further miscarriages of justice taking place however they have limited power and will only distribute appeals if the case was 'unsafe' i.e the defendant was given an unfair trial in some way. If they feel a case was not conducted properly or they require further evidence they can also call for a section 17 or a section 19 both of which will mean re-evaluating the evidence as well as looking for fresh evidence.

The case we were given to work with was a double murder of an elderly couple. In summary a man named Warner was accused of murdering the elderly couple after stabbing them repeatedly and raping the woman. The man admitted to breaking into the house hoping to steal from them but claims to have not gone upstairs which was were they were killed, there is no evidence to prove he did go upstairs. Warner's house mate claims that he returned around 3 in the morning with the time of death being 2. Another suspect was believed to be the next door neighbour and also there was apparently a man who got a taxi covered in blood but this was around 12.45, so in reality this guy doesn't seem to have a leg to stand on. Unfortunately for us we were left on a bit of a cliffhanger and will have to wait a while to find out the final verdict but i'll leave it up to you to form your own opinions.