02 May 2025
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has been widely criticised, notably for its mishandling of the case of Andrew Malkinson (pictured), who spent 17 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. This culminated in the Law Commission’s recent proposal that the CCRC’s ‘real possibility’ referral test be replaced. But not everyone agrees. In this week’s NLJ, Professor Graham Zellick, who chaired the CCRC from 2003 to 2008, mounts a strong defence of the test.
He writes: ‘From almost my first day… and throughout my five years in post, I found myself having to defend the statutory test for referral of a case to the relevant appeal court. There was much wrong with the CCRC in those days, to which I put my shoulder, but the referral test was not among the problems, then or now.’
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