There are concerns about the future of the miscarriage of justice watchdog in New Zealand only four years after it was set up following the model of our troubled Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC). Critics believe that the independence of the NZ CCRC is already being dangerously undermined after the government told the commission’s head, Colin Carruthers KC, that he was to be replaced by a retired judge and two commissioners wouldn’t have their terms renewed when they expired later this year.
There are strong echoes of the experience of our own CCRC where the Ministry of Justice has also been accused of political interference with the supposedly independent watchdog. Justice campaigner Mike Kalaugher, told journalist Mike White (writing for The Post) that putting an ex-judge at the top sent ‘a terrible message’ to the wrongfully convicted who would now see the CCRC as just another court. ‘Same old same old. So why should you expect a different result?”
Nigel Hampton KC immediately resigned from the NZ CCRC after he was told that he was not going to serve a second term as commissioner. He argued that appointing a former judge to head the commission threatened to undermine its reputation. ‘These applicants will already have a considerable distrust of the judicial system and the judiciary. And to them the fact a very recently retired Court of Appeal judge is to be in charge of the CCRC will, I think, both dent their confidence in the CCRC, and affect the view of its independence.’
Whilst we have never had a judge serving on the CCRC, there was deep concern when the present chair, Helen Pitcher was appointed chair of the body that selects judges, the Judicial Appointments Commission, which was seen as a direct conflict of interest. Nigel Hampton referred to the crisis enveloping Pitcher (including calls for her to resign) as a result of the botched investigation of Andrew Malkinson’s case. Hampton said his ‘greatest fear’ was that the NZ commission would ‘now miss a legitimate application’ such as Malkinson or Victor Nealon who were both turned down by the CCRC twice and both served 17 years for rapes they didn’t commit.
Mike Kalaugher said the latest commissioner appointments lacked diversity with ‘nobody having forensic knowledge any more, and nobody from journalism or justice campaigning backgrounds’. ‘It’s like they’re searching through the ranks of people they are familiar with,’ he said. Critics of our own CCRC point to a similar shift in the profile of commissioner appointments. That change here has been exacerbated by the MoJ foisting changes to the terms of tenure of CCRC commissioners in England and Wales – as a result they are no longer on salaries with pensions but receive instead a daily rate (more here).
