Miscarriage of Justice in UK Law

A perverse jury might conceivably announce a verdict of acquittal in the teeth of all the evidence; but the provision that the Court of Criminal Appeal may dismiss the appeal if they consider that no substantial miscarriage of justice has actually occurred in convicting the accused assumes a situation where a reasonable jury, after being properly directed, would, on the evidence properly admissible, without doubt convict.

In these four cases the court did not find that the convictions were safe: it considered that no miscarriage of justice had actually occurred and applied the proviso. Our sole obligation is to consider whether a conviction is unsafe.

In my view it would be wrong and undesirable to attempt to define in the abstract what are the relevant factors. By way of example, a relevant factor telling in favour of a defendant might well be the fact that the civil action or some step in it, would be likely to obtain such publicity as might sensibly be expected to reach, and to influence, parsons who would or might be jurors in criminal proceedings.

A substantial miscarriage of justice will actually occur if fresh, admissible and apparently credible evidence is admitted which the jury convicting a defendant had no opportunity to consider but which might have led it, acting reasonably, to reach a different verdict if it had had the opportunity to consider it. It is, however, the duty of the criminal appellate courts to seek to identify and rectify convictions which may be unjust.

We prefer to say that the outcome in the instances given by Lord Esher and Mann LJ results from performing the balancing exercise not from dispensing with it. If the disputed material may prove the defendant's innocence or avoid a miscarriage of justice, then the balance comes down resoundingly in favour of disclosing it.

The Court of Appeal can make its assessment of the fresh evidence it has heard, but save in a clear case it is at a disadvantage in seeking to relate that evidence to the rest of the evidence which the jury heard. For these reasons it will usually be wise for the Court of Appeal, in a case of any difficulty, to test their own provisional view by asking whether the evidence, if given at the trial, might reasonably have affected the decision of the trial jury to convict.