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Cite as: [2010] ECHR 2223
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FOURTH SECTION
Application no.
30178/09
by K.F.
against the United Kingdom
lodged on 27
May 2009
STATEMENT OF FACTS
THE FACTS
1. The applicant, K.F., is a British national who was born in 1945 and lives in Middlesbrough.
A. The circumstances of the case
2. The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
3. On 3 March 2000 the applicant was convicted at Teeside Crown Court of five counts of indecent assault on his daughter, aged between seven and nine at the time of the incidents in question, and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. He was acquitted of count six. His daughter’s evidence of indecent assault was supported by evidence from her grandmother, her mother and two doctors. The applicant’s defence was that the account given by the girl was made up by her at the instigation of her mother. In his summing up, the trial judge noted:
“If you accept the evidence of Drs Gough and Askenasy, it is extraordinary powerful support for the contention that this little girl was abused by somebody in the manner she describes. But nobody suggests that if they are wrong it in any way shows there was no abuse.”
4. The applicant’s application for leave to appeal against conviction was refused by the Court of Appeal on 12 January 2001.
5. In April 2001 the applicant made an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (“CCRC”) to have his conviction referred to the Court of Appeal. In February 2002 the CCRC decided not to refer the case to the Court of Appeal.
6. On 12 September 2005 the applicant applied again to the CCRC to have his conviction referred to the Court of Appeal. On 19 June 2007 the CCRC referred the conviction on four grounds, namely (i) new medical evidence which suggested that the medical evidence relied on at trial was flawed; (ii) material relevant to the applicant’s defence that the allegation had been fabricated which was not available to the defence; (iii) the jury’s acquittal on count six was logically inconsistent with subsequent convictions on the remaining counts; and (iv) material misdirection in respect of the recent complaint evidence.
7. On 8 October 2007 his conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal; the prosecution did not oppose the appeal. Although all four grounds to which the CCRC report referred were before the court, it made reference only to the first ground. Latham LJ noted:
“4. ... There is now clear medical evidence to cast doubt on the views expressed by the two doctors at the trial referred to by the judge. Bearing in mind the terms in which the judge put that evidence to the jury, the fact that there is such doubt cast on their evidence means that this conviction cannot be safe and is accordingly quashed.”
8. He continued:
“The situation is that although at one stage the prosecution were minded to ask for a retrial, the position has now been reached which makes it plain that a retrial will be inappropriate. It is not therefore pursued, and accordingly the only order that we need make today is that the conviction of this appellant is quashed.”
9. The applicant made a claim for compensation pursuant to section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (“the 1998 Act” – see below).
10. On 22 October 2008 the claim was refused by the Secretary of State on the grounds that he did not accept that the applicant’s conviction was quashed on the grounds that the facts showed “beyond reasonable doubt that there had been a miscarriage of justice”. The letter continued:
“All that can be said is that the jury may or may not have convicted [the applicant] had the new evidence been available.”
11. In January 2009 the applicant was advised by his lawyer that he did not have grounds for judicial review of the decision in light of the House of Lords decision in R (Mullen) (see below) and the Court of Appeal judgment in R (Allen) (see below).
B. Relevant domestic law and practice
1. The power of the Court of Appeal to quash a conviction
12. Section 2(1) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968 (as amended) provides that the Court of Appeal:
“(a) shall allow an appeal against conviction if they think that the conviction is unsafe; and
(b) shall dismiss such an appeal in any other case.”
13. Section 2(2) requires the court to quash the conviction in the event that it allows the appeal.
14. Section 2(3) provides:
“An order of the Court of Appeal quashing a conviction shall, except when under section 7 below the appellant is ordered to be retried, operate as a direction to the court of trial to enter, instead of the record of conviction, a judgment and verdict of acquittal.”
15. In R v. Pendleton [2001] UKHL 66, the House of Lords considered the approach of appeal courts in cases involving fresh evidence. Lord Bingham of Cornhill noted:
“19. It is undesirable that exercise of the important judgment entrusted to the Court of Appeal by section 2(1) of the 1968 Act should be constrained by words not to be found in the statute and that adherence to a particular thought process should be required by judicial decision. Thus the House in Stafford were right to reject the submission of counsel that the Court of Appeal had asked the wrong question by taking as the test the effect of the fresh evidence on their minds and not the effect that that evidence would have had on the mind of the jury ([1974] AC 878 at 880). It would, as the House pointed out, be anomalous for the court to say that the evidence raised no doubt whatever in their minds but might have raised a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury. I am not persuaded that the House laid down any incorrect principle in Stafford, so long as the Court of Appeal bears very clearly in mind that the question for its consideration is whether the conviction is safe and not whether the accused is guilty. But the test advocated by counsel in Stafford and by Mr Mansfield in this appeal does have a dual virtue to which the speeches I have quoted perhaps gave somewhat inadequate recognition. First, it reminds the Court of Appeal that it is not and should never become the primary decision-maker. Secondly, it reminds the Court of Appeal that it has an imperfect and incomplete understanding of the full processes which led the jury to convict. 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. If it might, the conviction must be thought to be unsafe.”
16. Subsequently, Lord Brown of Eaton-Under-Heywood in the Privy Council case of Dial and another v. State of Trinidad and Tobago [2005] UKPC 4, commented:
“31. In the board’s view the law is now clearly established and can be simply stated as follows. Where fresh evidence is adduced on a criminal appeal it is for the Court of Appeal, assuming always that it accepts it, to evaluate its importance in the context of the remainder of the evidence in the case. If the court concludes that the fresh evidence raises no reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the accused it will dismiss the appeal. The primary question is for the court itself and is not what effect the fresh evidence would have had on the mind of the jury. That said, if the court regards the case as a difficult one, it may find it helpful to test its view ‘by asking whether the evidence, if given at the trial, might reasonably have affected the decision of the trial jury to convict’: R v Pendleton [2002] 1 WLR 72, 83, para 19. The guiding principle nevertheless remains that stated by Viscount Dilhorne in Staffords case [1974] AC 878, 906, and affirmed by the House in R v Pendleton:
‘While... the Court of Appeal and this House may find it a convenient approach to consider what a jury might have done if they had heard the fresh evidence, the ultimate responsibility rests with them and them alone for deciding the question [whether or not the verdict is unsafe].’
32. That is the principle correctly and consistently applied nowadays by the criminal division of the Court of Appeal in England ...”
2. Compensation for miscarriages of justice
17. Section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 provides that:
“(1) Subject to subsection (2) below, when a person has been convicted of a criminal offence and when subsequently his conviction has been reversed or he has been pardoned on the ground that a new or newly discovered fact shows beyond reasonable doubt that there has been a miscarriage of justice, the Secretary of State shall pay compensation for the miscarriage of justice to the person who has suffered punishment as a result of such conviction ... unless the non-disclosure of the unknown fact was wholly or partly attributable to the person convicted.
(2) No payment of compensation under this section shall be made unless an application for such compensation has been made to the Secretary of State.
(3) The question whether there is a right to compensation under this section shall be determined by the Secretary of State.
...
(5) In this section ‘reversed’ shall be construed as referring to a conviction having been quashed–
(a) on an appeal out of time; or
(b) on a reference–
(i) under the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 [referral to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission];
...
(6) For the purposes of this section a person suffers punishment as a result of a conviction when sentence is passed on him for the offence of which he was convicted.
...”
18. In R (on the application of Mullen) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2004] UKHL 18, the House of Lords considered the interpretation of section 133 of the 1988 Act. Mr Mullen had been convicted of conspiracy to cause explosions and his trial in England had been possible only because the British authorities had arranged his deportation from Zimbabwe in flagrant breach of local and international law. This emerged only after conviction and his case came before the Court of Appeal approximately seven years later. The conviction was quashed on the ground that Mr Mullen’s deportation had involved abuse of process, namely a gross abuse of executive power. His claim for compensation under section 133 or, alternatively, the previous ex gratia scheme was refused. In a subsequent challenge, the House of Lords unanimously found that section 133 did not extend to the case where the conviction was quashed on grounds entirely unconnected with the guilt or innocence of the defendant and where there had been no failure in the trial process.
19. Lord Bingham noted at the outset:
“4. ...The expression ‘wrongful convictions’ is not a legal term of art and it has no settled meaning. Plainly the expression includes the conviction of those who are innocent of the crime of which they have been convicted. But in ordinary parlance the expression would, I think, be extended to those who, whether guilty or not, should clearly not have been convicted at their trials. It is impossible and unnecessary to identify the manifold reasons why a defendant may be convicted when he should not have been. It may be because the evidence against him was fabricated or perjured. It may be because flawed expert evidence was relied on to secure conviction. It may be because evidence helpful to the defence was concealed or withheld. It may be because the jury was the subject of malicious interference. It may be because of judicial unfairness or misdirection. In cases of this kind, it may, or more often may not, be possible to say that a defendant is innocent, but it is possible to say that he has been wrongly convicted. The common factor in such cases is that something has gone seriously wrong in the investigation of the offence or the conduct of the trial, resulting in the conviction of someone who should not have been convicted.”
20. He continued:
“8. ... In quashing Mr Mullen’s conviction the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) condemned the abuse of executive power which had led to his apprehension and abduction in the only way it effectively could. But it identified no failure in the trial process. It is for failures of the trial process that the Secretary of State is bound, by section 133 and article 14(6), to pay compensation. On that limited ground I would hold that he is not bound to pay compensation under section 133.”
21. He hesitated to accept the submission of the Secretary of State to the effect that section 133, reflecting Article 14(6) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“ICCPR” – see below), obliged him to pay compensation only when a defendant, finally acquitted in circumstances satisfying the statutory conditions, is shown beyond reasonable doubt to be innocent of the crime of which he had been convicted. In light of his conclusion that no compensation was payable, it was, however, not necessary to decide this point.
22. Lord Steyn observed that section 133 was modelled on Article 14(6) ICCPR, as was Article 3 of Protocol No. 7 to the Convention. He reviewed several judgments of this Court in which a violation of Article 6 § 2 had been found in respect of compensation claims where the applicants had been acquitted at trial, concluding:
“41. ... The decisions are not relevant to the issue presently under consideration. The interaction between article 6(2) and article 3 of Protocol No. 7 was not under consideration. The reason was that in Austrian legislation there was a wider right to compensation than provided by article 3 of Protocol No. 7.”
23. Having concluded that the jurisprudence of this Court was of no assistance in the interpretation of section 133, Lord Steyn continued:
“45. It is now possible to examine the interpretation of article 14(6) on its own terms. The starting point must, of course, be the language and structure of article 14(6) as enacted in United Kingdom law by section 133. It is to be noted that a case where a defendant was wrongly convicted (e.g. on the ground that the circumstantial evidence did not exclude the reasonable possibility of innocence) and then had his conviction quashed on an appeal lodged within ordinary time limits does not qualify for compensation. There was no intention to create a right to compensation in favour of victims in this category. All cases in this category are excluded whatever the grounds on which the appeal is allowed and whatever the cause of the wrongful conviction. It follows that there was no overarching purpose of compensating all who are wrongly convicted. In cases of a wrongful conviction quashed on an appeal out of time an indispensable pre-condition is that ‘(1) a new or newly discovered fact (2) shows conclusively that there has been a miscarriage of justice’ (numbering added). If there is no new or newly discovered fact, but simply, for example, a recognition that an earlier dismissal of an appeal was wrong, the case falls outside article 14(6). That is so, however palpable the error in the first appellate decision may have been, and however severe the punishment that the victim suffered unjustly. These considerations demonstrate that the fundamental right under article 14(6) was unquestionably narrowly circumscribed.
46. The requirement that the new or newly discovered fact must show conclusively (or beyond reasonable doubt in the language of section 133) ‘that there has been a miscarriage of justice’ is important. It filters out cases where it is only established that there may have been a wrongful conviction. Similarly excluded are cases where it is only probable that there has been a wrongful conviction. These two categories would include the vast majority of cases where an appeal is allowed out of time ... I regard these considerations as militating against the expansive interpretation of ‘miscarriage of justice’ put forward on behalf of Mr Mullen. They also demonstrate the implausibility of the extensive interpretation of Schiemann LJ [in the Court of Appeal in the present case]: it entirely erodes the effect of evidence showing ‘conclusively that there has been a miscarriage of justice’. While accepting that in other contexts ‘a miscarriage of justice’ is capable of bearing a narrower or wider meaning, the only relevant context points to a narrow interpretation, viz the case where innocence is demonstrated.”
24. Thus he concluded:
“56. ... the autonomous meaning of the words ‘a miscarriage of justice’ extends only to ‘clear cases of miscarriage of justice, in the sense that there would be acknowledgement that the person concerned was clearly innocent’ as it is put in the Explanatory Report. This is the international meaning which Parliament adopted when it enacted section 133 of the 1988 Act.”
25. The case of R (on the application of Allen) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2008] EWCA Civ 808, concerned judicial review proceedings brought by a claimant whose conviction had been quashed following an appeal out of time, on the basis of new medical evidence. Lord Justice Hughes, delivering the court’s judgment, summarised the approach of the Court of Appeal in quashing the claimant’s conviction in the case and noted:
“17. ... there can be no doubt that the court regarded the proper interpretation of the clinical findings in this case as a matter which it ought not itself to resolve, but rather as one which could and should be resolved by a jury on hearing the competing expert opinions. Adopting that approach, it decided that the evidence which was now available might, if it had been heard by the jury, have led to a different result.”
26. Regarding the right to compensation under section 133 of the 1988 Act, Hughes LJ observed:
“19. ... Firstly, the right to compensation only arises in those cases of quashed convictions where the appeal succeeds on the basis of ‘a new or newly discovered fact’. The common cases of error of law at trial, or misdirection of the jury, or procedural irregularity are thus excluded. Secondly, it arises only where the miscarriage of justice is established by such new fact ‘conclusively’ or ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. The common case in which a conviction is quashed because there exist some doubts about its safety is thus also excluded. Thirdly, section 133 gives effect to the requirement that there shall have been a new or newly discovered fact by restricting compensation to cases other than appeals allowed in ordinary course, namely to those either heard out of time or referred by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.”
27. Hughes LJ summarised the difference of approach between Lords Bingham and Steyn in R (Mullen) as follows:
“Lord Steyn held ... that in this context ‘miscarriage of justice’ means that the innocence of the defendant is acknowledged. Lord Bingham ... expressed no concluded opinion on this question, but made it clear that he ‘hesitated to accept’ this interpretation. For his part, he was ready to accept that ‘miscarriage of justice’ extended in this context to serious failures of the trial process, whether or not innocence was demonstrated.”
28. It was clear, and counsel for the claimant conceded, that the claimant’s innocence had not been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, or conclusively, by the decision of the Court of Appeal to quash the conviction. If Lord Steyn’s interpretation was correct, the claim therefore failed. As to Lord Bingham’s interpretation, Hughes LJ noted:
“...it is plain that the critical feature of the extended interpretation of ‘miscarriage of justice’ which [Lord Bingham] was prepared to contemplate is that ‘something has gone seriously wrong in.....the conduct of the trial’ ...”
29. He continued:
“27. In the present case there was nothing which went wrong with the conduct of the trial, whether seriously or otherwise. In speaking of ‘flawed expert evidence’ it is clear that Lord Bingham cannot have been contemplating evidence which was conscientiously given and based upon sound expertise at the time of trial. The most that could be said against the expert evidence given at this trial is that it might need adjustment in the light of new medical research and/or thinking. In any event, the medical evidence given at time of trial has not been demonstrated to be flawed, even in this limited sense. As the passages from the judgment of the [Court of Appeal] which I have cited show, this court’s decision went no further than to say that the differences of medical opinion needed to be resolved by a jury. Nor was this a case in which the jury was presented with a medical consensus that the triad was diagnostic of unlawful killing. The medical evidence called for the appellant accepted that it was consistent with unlawful killing but disputed that it necessarily led to that conclusion. The appeal was allowed because over the intervening years more possible force had emerged for the opinion voiced on the appellant’s behalf and now supported by Dr Squier’s evidence, which the jury had not heard and which the [Court of Appeal], despite plain doubts about it, was not in a position wholly to dismiss.
28. For the same reasons, I have no doubt that the decision of the [Court of Appeal] does not begin to carry the implication that there was no case for the appellant to answer once the fresh evidence was available ...”
30. He therefore concluded:
“29. In the present case, there was no basis for saying that, on the new evidence, there was no case to go to a jury. Moreover, if the court had meant to say that there was (now) no case to answer, it would have said so in plain terms. On the contrary, its oft-repeated statements that the evaluation of the rival medical opinions would be a matter for the jury are wholly inconsistent with a finding that there was no case to answer on the new state of medical evidence. Likewise, the posing of the Pendleton question by way of check is inconsistent with a finding that the case should never have reached the jury if the fresh evidence had been known.
30. In those circumstances, I reach the clear conclusion that, even on the interpretation of section 133 which Lord Bingham favoured, this case cannot succeed ...”
31. Although in the circumstances it was not necessary to resolve the difference of construction articulated by Lord Bingham and Lord Steyn, Hughes LJ nonetheless expressed a preference for Lord Steyn’s approach. He noted:
“40. Whilst I agree of course that the [Court of Appeal] does not ordinarily address the question of guilt or innocence, but only the safety of the conviction, those cases where the innocence of the convicted defendant is genuinely demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt by new or newly discovered fact will be identifiable in that court and the judgment will, in virtually every case, make plain that this is so. Accordingly I respectfully part company from the view expressed by Schiemann LJ, when Mullen was in the Court of Appeal, that the approach of the [Court of Appeal] makes the operation of section 133 difficult or unworkable unless a broader definition of miscarriage of justice is adopted. On the contrary, as it seems to me, the operation of the section poses very real difficulties if the broader definition is adopted, for then it becomes necessary to ask in every case of conviction quashed on grounds of fresh evidence whether it satisfies the section 133 criterion of miscarriage proved beyond reasonable doubt or is merely a case of doubt raised to the extent that the conviction is unsafe. If, however, miscarriage of justice means the establishment of innocence beyond reasonable doubt, there will usually be no difficulty in those cases being apparent from the judgments of the [Court of Appeal].”
32. As regards the claimant’s submissions based on the presumption of innocence in Article 6 § 2, Hughes LJ referred to the Court’s judgments in Sekanina v. Austria, 25 August 1993, Series A no. 266 A; Rushiti v. Austria, no. 28389/95, 21 March 2000; Weixelbraun v. Austria, no. 33730/96, 20 December 2001; O. v. Norway, no. 29327/95, ECHR 2003 II; and Hammern v. Norway, no. 30287/96, 11 February 2003. He concluded that they did not lead to the conclusion that the claimant was entitled to compensation under section 133, for, inter alia, the following reasons:
“35. i) None of these cases considered the ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966] scheme for payment of compensation for conclusively proved miscarriage of justice, which is what is in issue here.
ii) Article 14 of the ICCPR juxtaposes within it both the provision for compensation in article 14(6), now under consideration, and, in article 14(2), a provision in terms identical to article 6(2) ECHR. Yet by article 14(6) it plainly requires something more than the quashing of the conviction before the right to compensation arises, namely that a miscarriage of justice be conclusively demonstrated by new or newly discovered facts. It does not seem to me that these provisions could co-exist in these terms if the consequence of article 14(2) was that nothing more could be required for compensation beyond the quashing of the conviction on the basis of new fact ...
iii) Whilst the ICCPR is a treaty independent of the European Convention, provisions identical to article 14(6) are to be found in Protocol 7 to the ECHR, article 3. For the same reasons, it is inconceivable that article 3 could be in the terms it is if article 6(2) of the main Convention meant that compensation necessarily followed the quashing of a conviction on the basis of fresh evidence.
...
vi) The basis for the decisions in the Austrian and Norwegian cases was the closeness of the link between the decision to acquit on the merits and the decision as to compensation. In the Austrian cases the compensation decision was within the jurisdiction of the criminal court, albeit it was usually made by a differently constituted criminal court some time after the acquittal, as for example a confiscation order may be in England. Moreover, the court proceeded in part by analysing the decision of the trial jury. In the Norwegian cases the acquittal was made by a court composed of judges and jury, and the same judges went on more or less immediately to consider compensation ...
vii) By contrast, compensation in a fresh evidence case under article 14(6) and section 133 is not linked to any acquittal on the merits. Rather, it is to be paid when not only has there been a reversal of the conviction but also where the additional factor exists of a miscarriage of justice demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, or conclusively, to have taken place.
viii) It can no doubt be said ... that just as compensation for acquittal under the Norwegian scheme was described by the Court as a procedure whose object was ‘to establish whether the State had a financial obligation to compensate the burden it had created for the ...person by the proceedings it had instituted against him’ (see O v Norway paragraph 38), so too is the scheme for compensation for miscarriage of justice under article 14(6). But that is to beg the question when the scheme in question creates such an obligation. If article 6(2) were to apply to claims under the scheme here under consideration, there would be no reason in logic or fairness to distinguish between those whose convictions are quashed on grounds of fresh evidence and those whose convictions are quashed on other grounds; each would be in the position of being able to rely on the presumption of innocence. Indeed, there would be no obvious reason for distinguishing between those who are convicted but whose convictions are quashed, and those who are acquitted at trial. But it is clear that article 14(6) does not provide for compensation to be paid except in the limited circumstances to which it refers.
...”
C. Relevant international material
1. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966
33. Article 14(2) of the ICCPR provides that:
“Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall have the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.”
34. Article 14(6) provides:
“When a person has by a final decision been convicted of a criminal offence and when subsequently his conviction has been reversed or he has been pardoned on the ground that a new or newly discovered fact shows conclusively that there has been a miscarriage of justice, the person who has suffered punishment as a result of such conviction shall be compensated according to law, unless it is proved that the non-disclosure of the unknown fact in time is wholly or partly attributable to him.”
2. Explanatory report to Protocol No. 7 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms
35. Article 3 of Protocol No. 7 reads:
“When a person has by a final decision been convicted of a criminal offence and when subsequently his conviction has been reversed, or he has been pardoned, on the ground that a new or newly discovered fact shows conclusively that there has been a miscarriage of justice, the person who has suffered punishment as a result of such conviction shall be compensated according to the law or the practice of the State concerned, unless it is proved that the non disclosure of the unknown fact in time is wholly or partly attributable to him.”
36. The Explanatory Report to Protocol No. 7, Article 3 of which guarantees the right to compensation for wrongful conviction, was prepared by the Steering Committee for Human Rights and submitted to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. It explains at the outset that the report itself:
“... does not constitute an instrument providing an authoritative interpretation of the text of the Protocol, although it might be of such a nature as to facilitate the understanding of the provisions contained therein.”
37. As regards Article 3 of Protocol No. 7, the report notes, inter alia:
“23. Secondly, the article applies only where the person’s conviction has been reversed or he has been pardoned, in either case on the ground that a new or newly discovered fact shows conclusively that there has been a miscarriage of justice – that is, some serious failure in the judicial process involving grave prejudice to the convicted person. Therefore, there is no requirement under the article to pay compensation if the conviction has been reversed or a pardon has been granted on some other ground ...
...
25. In all cases in which these preconditions are satisfied, compensation is payable ‘according to the law or the practice of the State concerned’. This does not mean that no compensation is payable if the law or practice makes no provision for such compensation. It means that the law or practice of the State should provide for the payment of compensation in all cases to which the article applies. The intention is that States would be obliged to compensate persons only in clear cases of miscarriage of justice, in the sense that there would be acknowledgement that the person concerned was clearly innocent. The article is not intended to give a right of compensation where all the preconditions are not satisfied, for example, where an appellate court had quashed a conviction because it had discovered some fact which introduced a reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the accused and which had been overlooked by the trial judge.”
COMPLAINTS
The applicant complains under Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (c) of the Convention that he did not have a fair trial in the proceedings before the Crown Court.
He further complains under Article 5 § 5, Article 6 § 2 and Article 3 of Protocol No. 7 that he did not receive compensation for his wrongful conviction because judicial interpretation of section 133 of the 1988 Act established that no compensation was payable where a person whose conviction was quashed on appeal might still have been convicted by a jury had the medical evidence been available to it.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
