Campaigners are calling for legal reforms to provide improved access to evidence that may help prove the innocence of the wrongly convicted. They say a 2014 high court ruling is being used to effectively block access to police files and evidence. The Law Commission, the statutory independent body that reviews the law in England and Wales, confirmed this weekend that it is reviewing the law on criminal appeals. The Appeal, a charity and legal practice that fights miscarriages of justice, wants any review to include an overhaul of disclosure rules and a new independent body to oversee the scheme. James Burley, a researcher at the Appeal, said: “I have no doubt that there are innocent people who cannot access evidence because the law on post-conviction disclosure is so restrictive. It’s incredibly unfair.” Lawyers or investigators working on potential miscarriages of justice do not usually have access to evidence, and court records can only be made available at a cost of thousands of pounds. The high court case that set a legal limit on access to post-conviction evidence involved former salesman Kevin Nunn from Woolpit in Suffolk. Nunn was convicted at Ipswich crown court in November 2006 of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Dawn Walker. Kevin Nunn was convicted despite the fact that there was no forensic evidence linking him to the crime and he had no history of violence. Photo: BBC The court had heard that her body was discovered naked from the waist down by the River Lark in Suffolk and that her body had been set alight with petrol. Nunn was convicted despite the fact that there was no forensic evidence linking him to the crime and he had no history of violence. It was revealed in court that sperm had been found on the victim, even though the court was told Nunn was essentially infertile. The sperm was not DNA-tested at the time, and Nunn sought access to the evidence for new modern tests to see if there was a match to a known offender or a possible new suspect. In June 2014, the high court dismissed his case, ruling that access to such material is only required where “it appears that there is a real prospect that further investigation will reveal something which may affect the safety of the conviction”. The court held that this threshold had not been met. “An innocent man and his family’s life was destroyed,” Nunn’s sister Brigitte Butcher said. “Kevin is still in prison after 17 years and will continue to maintain his innocence as he has since March 16, 2005 when he was charged with murder.” The case had wider ramifications, with police forces systematically blocking access to evidence after the conviction, citing the high court ruling. Louise Shorter, founder of Inside Justice, which investigates possible miscarriages of justice and has taken on the Nunn case, said: “Access to these exhibits was on a case-by-case basis, but now there seems to be total denial, with the powers that be saying we are sending material only to the Criminal Investigations Commission [CCRC].” The CCRC is a statutory body that looks into possible miscarriages of justice and can require the police to produce material. “The Nunn decision was intended to stop fishing expeditions,” another researcher observed last week. “But only by going on fishing expeditions do you catch fish.” The Appeal says one of the cases where the charity has been blocked from accessing case files is that of Roger Khan, a vulnerable defendant convicted of attempted murder in Newton Abbot in Devon in 2011. Khan represented himself at trial of. The charity discovered that one of the police investigators had a personal relationship with a possible alternative suspect, but police refused a request for disclosure of the exact links and safeguards put in place to ensure the investigation was not tampered with. An attempt to challenge the decision by judicial review was rejected in 2019 on the grounds that the charity had not met the threshold required in the Nunn decision. Campaigners say the CCRC uses its powers conservatively and will typically only hear cases that have already been appealed. A submission by the Law Commission Review Appeal warns that the Nunn decision “leaves wrongfully convicted defendants without an effective means of access to any evidence in the possession of law enforcement that undermines the safety of their conviction.” The Law Commission said: “In relation to criminal appeals, the lord chancellor [Dominic Raab] suggested that the committee should review the law, with a view to ensuring that the courts have powers that enable effective, efficient and appropriate resolution of appeals. “We are keen to move this project forward and are currently in discussions about the scope of the project.” This article was amended on 10 July 2022. An earlier version incorrectly stated in the caption that Kevin Nunn was jailed for murdering his sister, not his ex-girlfriend.
