WEBVTT - The Long Road To Justice 0:00:02.240 --> 0:00:05.560 This isn't the story of one legal case. It's about 0:00:05.559 --> 0:00:10.360 what happens if the system itself makes mistakes. In Britain, 0:00:10.440 --> 0:00:14.440 a guilty verdict carries enormous weight. It's meant to be final, 0:00:15.400 --> 0:00:19.480 but history tells us it's not always final. What if 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:23.239 the system gets it wrong? For the people trapped inside 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:28.760 that verdict, the road back can be painfully slow, sometimes impossible. 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:34.720 In this episode, I'm looking beyond the headlines to the 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:39.960 machinery of British justice, the appeal courts, the Criminal Cases 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:44.159 Review Commission, which investigates cases where there are doubts, and 0:00:44.240 --> 0:00:47.440 the culture that makes it so hard to admit error. 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:52.400 To help make sense of it, I spoke to John Robbins, 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:56.520 a journalist who spent years reporting on miscarriages of justice 0:00:56.560 --> 0:01:01.560 in the UK. He's talked to families, lawyers, campaigners. He 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:07.440 knows the process and the points where it breaks. I'm 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:12.120 Amanda Knox and from Vespucci and iHeart Podcasts. This is 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:16.399 Doubt the Case of Lucy let Be Bonus episode two, 0:01:17.120 --> 0:01:29.319 The Long Road to Justice for people who haven't witnessed 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:33.080 or had experience of the British justice system. Let's start 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:36.800 with what happens after a conviction and why the path 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:40.280 to correcting a mistake feels so narrow. 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:43.480 So if you are an innocent person wrongly convicted and 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:45.679 you're going to city in prison and you're rotting in prison, 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:49.000 basically your one chance of freedom, your one shot is 0:01:49.040 --> 0:01:52.520 to write an application to this Birmingham based organization called 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:55.120 the Criminal Cases Review Commission, and if they think you've 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:58.520 got a good case, they have the power to refer 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:00.440 your case back to the Court of a and the 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:02.560 Court of Appeal has the power to overturn it. 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:04.000 And it's just for. 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:08.120 American listeners, and for listeners outside of the UK it 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:10.560 will seem a bit bonkers because actually one of the 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:12.800 reasons why the Criminication Review Commission was set up in 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:15.560 the first place was because of all these miscarriages, just 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:18.040 as we saw in the seventies and the eighties, And 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:21.000 really the idea was the courts just never got to scripts. 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:21.680 With these difficult cases. 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:25.760 So we'll introduce this brilliant mischaracter justice watchdog body. So 0:02:25.880 --> 0:02:28.520 the problem is the courts, then that is a difficulty. 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:34.000 In the US, I've seen the same pattern. Once you're convicted, 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:39.560 the machinery of justice isn't built to look backward. Appeal 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:43.440 courts don't ask did we get the truth? They ask 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:48.760 did we follow the rules? Across this episode, I'm asking 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:54.200 John to break down the structure, how appeals work, the culture, 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:59.239 why institutions resist changing their minds, and the human cost 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:06.280 what this does to people and families. You're going to 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:11.000 hear a few phrases that matter. One is fresh evidence, 0:03:11.720 --> 0:03:17.560 another is an atomistic approach. Together they shape what gets 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:22.720 back before judges and what doesn't. Let's start with the 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:26.080 nuts and bolts. If someone is convicted and says the 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:30.679 court got it wrong, the presumption of innocence then flips. 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:35.120 In other words, the system treats the conviction as fact, 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:38.680 and it's up to the convicted person to prove a 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:43.600 miscarriage of justice. But how do you prove a negative? 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:45.800 Well, you can have all the supports and public will 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:48.880 and media coverage that you want. Whether you're going to 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:52.520 hit the legal thresholds is a totally different matter. But yes, 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:57.440 proving a negative absolutely what a nightmare, especially in this scenario, 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:01.760 the legalistic nature of our court. You need fresh evidence. 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:05.480 That fresh evidence must be enough to undermine the safety 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:09.640 of the conviction and the history of miscarriage just as 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:12.320 recently is the courts can take a very narrow view 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:15.520 on that. Legal scholars will kind of talk about anatomistic 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:19.360 approach where they just look narrowly at what is before them, 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:21.760 the new evidence that's before them, and they don't look 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:23.760 at everything else that everyone else might. 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:24.359 Be talking about. 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:28.719 In theory, that sounds reasonable. You get a fair trial, 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:32.640 and if something goes wrong, you can appeal. In practice, 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:37.880 that appeal is incredibly hard to win. Appeal courts don't 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:42.080 retry cases. They only look for mistakes in law or 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:46.760 procedure and for new evidence that wasn't available the first 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:51.600 time around. In the US, applic courts are just as reluctant. 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:56.279 The Innocence Project has shown that most successful exonerations come 0:04:56.320 --> 0:05:00.880 from new DNA evidence. That's because it it's almost the 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:06.359 only kind of proof they'll accept. Anything else, even confessions 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:11.400 from real perpetrators, can be dismissed as not new enough. 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:18.320 Judging whether evidence is new enough is the responsibility of 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:22.920 the Criminal Case's Review Commission the CCRC. It's the body 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:25.599 that decides whether a case is strong enough to send 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:28.800 back to the Court of appeal. It's supposed to be 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:32.960 the safety net, but as John explains, it's a net 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:35.400 with large holes. 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:39.880 To kind of further layer on complexities. 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:42.800 You only will get your case sent back to the 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:46.560 Court of Appeal if the Criminal Case Review Commission believes 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:51.120 you have the reasonable possibility of your conviction being overturned, 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:54.760 which means the CCRC, the watchtock body, has to second 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:59.240 guess the Court of appeal. The real problem here is 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:02.400 if you get a more conservative court of appeal, then 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:07.120 increasingly the CCRC becomes a more conservative body, and that's 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:10.080 what we've seen over the last years. The CCRC has 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:12.080 pretty much ground to a halt. 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:18.559 It means the CCRC can't simply act on doubt. They 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:21.839 have to predict how the same court that upheld the 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:27.320 original verdict is likely to respond a second time, and 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:31.280 so the case is most in need of review. The 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:37.840 complex contested ones often never get that chance. But how 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:42.160 did this justice watchdog end up with this built in restraint? 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:46.279 The CCRC was set up after a series of this charriacters. 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:47.800 Just as the most kind of famous one was a 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:51.440 Birmingham six, so six kind of Innocent's irish been wrongly 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:55.560 convicted an IRA bombing campaign in the nineteen seventies and 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:57.640 there were a run of these cases, the Birmingham six, 0:06:57.680 --> 0:06:59.960 the Guildford four and Maguire seven, known as the r 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:02.760 Irish cases, and then there were other cases as well, 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:06.640 and the system lost public confidence to such a degree 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:09.600 that there was a Royal Commission and the main recommendation 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:12.600 was to set up the CCRC. CCRC came into being 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:15.440 in nineteen ninety seven. Miscaracters of Justice has kind of 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:18.360 moved as an issue that politicians kind of cut their 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:21.960 teeth on and made their careers through in the seventies 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.640 and the eighties and felt very strongly about and an 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:28.880 issue that really motivated the public. But for some reason, 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:32.840 and I'm not quite sure why this reason would be, 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:36.480 the politicians moved on, the media moved on as well. 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:41.760 The CCRC has been The problems are complex. It's been 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:46.480 staved of funds for years, you know, for over a decade. 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:52.480 It's been kind of newted by the courts making criticism 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:56.040 the Commission, and it's been let down by its own 0:07:56.120 --> 0:08:01.600 leadership as well, and there's lots of concerns about the 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:04.160 way the organization has handled itself. But I think the 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:10.320 serious issue is it's been undermined, underfunded, But it's also 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:14.920 seemingly run by people who haven't really kind of grasped 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:17.440 the challenge of the Commission, who aren't prepared to fight 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:21.000 against injustice, who are prepared to kind of expose these cases, 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:24.040 and it's become this defanged watchdog. 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:29.480 Some argue that the very organization created to stop injustice 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:35.120 now hesitates to challenge it. Even strong cases can stall 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:39.560 because they don't fit the narrow definition of fresh evidence. 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:42.800 They don't look at the new narrative. They just look 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:45.480 at that new piece of fresh evidence, and if that's 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:48.560 not enough to undermine the conviction, then the conviction remains 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:51.840 in place. We've seen, you know, frankly, very odd examples. 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:55.280 I mean, I've written about cases where the whole prosecution 0:08:55.440 --> 0:08:59.360 case has been entirely I would argue undermine, and yet 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:03.240 a conviction has been upheld on the most narrowest reason. 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:05.920 And what you get is the Court of Appeal clinging 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:09.880 on to the fiction of a man's guilt and the 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.040 rest of the world has moved on and said he 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:15.680 was innocent. From this atomistic approach, is this new piece 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:17.720 of evidence enough to undermine the conviction? 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:18.440 No, it's not. 0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:21.000 The conviction stays. We're not going to listen to all 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:23.240 that stuff that you're talking about in the media that 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:26.480 you're excited about. We're going to take this narrow, atimistic approach. 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:37.839 This narrow view of fresh evidence invites a paradox of finality, 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:43.760 the idea that stability matters more than truth. Once a 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:49.080 verdict is entered, the legal machine resists ondoing it no 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:53.520 matter how shaky the foundation, and when the Commission does 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:57.439 refer a case, the Court of Appeal can still reject it, 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:01.960 sometimes on the same grounds that the CCRC to hesitate 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:06.440 in the first place. This means that very few people 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:09.880 actually succeed in overturning their convictions. 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:16.240 Fifteen hundred people apply to the CCRC asking for their 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:19.000 case to be looked at again. A few years ago, 0:10:19.200 --> 0:10:21.320 just twelve people got their case sent back to the 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:23.520 Court of Appeal, and then a couple of years after that, 0:10:23.679 --> 0:10:27.120 just thirteen to less than one percent get their cases 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:29.720 sent back, And then, of course the Court of Appeal 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:32.640 doesn't overturn every one of them. The success rate of 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:34.440 the CCRC is about seventy percent. 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:41.360 In this system, certainty is prized above correction. It protects 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:45.880 the idea that the courts are almost always right, and 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:49.200 for the few who are wronged, the path to proving 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:55.680 it is long, lonely and stacked against them. That's something 0:10:55.800 --> 0:11:00.440 I recognize deeply. There's a special kind of isolation that 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:04.000 comes from knowing you're right but having no one in 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:09.400 power willing to believe you. But it isn't just the 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:14.520 structure that makes justice so hard to reach, it's also 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:21.600 the mindset. Next, John explains why British justice struggles not 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:37.120 just with procedure but with pride. Journalist and justice expert 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:41.400 John Robbins says the biggest obstacle to overturning wrongful convictions 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:45.720 in Britain isn't always the law itself, it's the people 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:50.160 enforcing it and the deep instinct within the system to 0:11:50.280 --> 0:11:51.319 defend itself. 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:54.600 So if we kind of go back to the bad 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:56.680 old days when there were these miscastus of justice in 0:11:56.679 --> 0:11:58.920 the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, that the main one 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:02.679 being the Birmingham's case, the judge that every law student 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:06.200 would know, Lord Denning, and the most well known judge 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:08.600 in our lifetime, said He've got a very famous quote, 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:11.720 but he said, if these men were telling the truth. 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:14.360 In other words, if these six innocent Irish men were 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:17.600 telling the truth and they were not IRA bombers, it 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:20.880 would be such the quote is such an appalling vista, 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:24.559 such an appalling prospect, because it meant that the police 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.079 would be lying, that the police would have beaten these 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:29.880 people up, etc. The police did lie, they did beat 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:33.480 confessions out of them, and they were convicted on dodgy evidence. 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:38.000 Denning's point was it's better that these people are convicted 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:40.400 and stay in prison then they're let out, because if 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:43.440 they're let out, that will undermine the integrity. 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:44.200 And the justice system. 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:48.080 Once a jury's verdict is in, every other part of 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:52.920 the process tends to reinforce it. Appeal judges defer to 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:57.160 trial judges, the CCRC defers to the Court of Appeal, 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:01.120 and at the end of that chain, the convicted person 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:06.640 is left shouting into the wind. The presumption of guilt 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:11.239 after conviction could describe almost any justice system I've encountered. 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:16.360 Once you're labeled guilty, the system assumes there was a 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:19.640 good reason for the conviction, and so the burden of 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:23.680 proof shifts. This assumption can be traced back to the 0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:27.880 initial trial, which is fought in an adversarial system. 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:33.120 The avasial system is this competitive theatrical one side, two 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:36.960 different narratives competing in the minds of the jewelry, and 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:40.280 that can easily, as you can imagine, distort a version 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:42.679 of events. And when you get the conviction happens. Then 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:47.320 suddenly the prosecution narrative becomes the dominant narrative which the 0:13:47.360 --> 0:13:50.640 media report on. So any kind of nuance, any kind 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:53.960 of inaccuracies, are sealed forever in the trial. 0:13:54.640 --> 0:14:00.520 In other words, the system prizes finality not because it's efficient, 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:04.600 but because it protects authority and the closure that a 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:09.080 verdict offers the victims and their families. It keeps the 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:14.520 story neat someone did it case closed, but protecting that 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:22.440 finality comes at the cost of the truth. You may 0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:26.720 have heard the term quality control used in business and manufacturing. 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:33.160 Car companies, app developers, online marketplaces. They all employ regular 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:38.640 QC measures to ensure customer satisfaction and safety. The assembly 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:41.680 line should be checked at some regular interval to ensure 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:45.480 there aren't defects that might cause harm. The presumption in 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:50.200 such cases is that there are inevitably errors, hopefully few, 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:55.160 but they won't be corrected unless you go looking for them. 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:58.720 That is why in the US conviction integrity units exist, 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:03.240 but they are often and small, underfunded, and politically risky. 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:07.760 It's hard to tell your own colleagues that they ruined 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:12.080 someone's life, even when the evidence demands it. 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:14.360 It's a political problem. It's a complicated problem, is what 0:15:14.400 --> 0:15:16.600 it is. It's a cultural problem as well. It's a 0:15:16.680 --> 0:15:20.920 multi dimensional problem. Yes, it is political. It's successive governments 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:23.960 have failed to recognize the importance of what is an 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:25.880 absolutely essential safety net. 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:28.520 Path of the justice system. That's a political problem. 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:31.560 It's being underfunded, but also the wrong people are being 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:34.080 put in to kind of lead the Commission. You can 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:38.080 always find ways not to overturn convictions, you can always 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:40.080 find ways to keep it as some people in prison, 0:15:40.520 --> 0:15:42.880 because the cases are never particularly black and white, they're 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:45.720 always kind of gray areas, and if you're kind of 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:49.520 looking for a reason not to do anything, you'll find 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:51.240 that reason. And that's one of the things that's gone 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:52.120 wrong with the Commission. 0:15:52.840 --> 0:15:56.960 And that's where John's own reporting often begins, in the 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:00.440 gap between what the law says is possible and what 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:05.800 fairness demands. He talks about visiting families who've spent decades 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:10.640 fighting to prove a loved one's innocence. By then, the 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:14.000 battle isn't just legal, it's psychological. 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:15.280 It's devastating. 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:18.560 There are thousands of people whose loved ones are in prison, 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:21.680 who have applied to the commission, and they're just going nowhere, 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:24.840 and it's heartbreaking. These people are just stuck in this 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:26.040 kind of limbo period. 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:31.800 But outside that system, beyond the courts and commissions, there's 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:35.400 another force that can change how these stories are told, 0:16:36.280 --> 0:16:47.280 the public and the media. Behind every legal case, there's 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:51.800 a person and usually a family, living with the fallout 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:56.960 for them. A wrongful conviction isn't an abstract problem in 0:16:57.000 --> 0:17:01.160 the justice system. It's a sentence that an end when 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:06.720 the prison doors open. Even exoneration can feel hollow. The 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:10.480 public rarely hears that part of the story, how difficult 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:13.800 it is to rebuild, or how reluctant the state is 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:19.280 to make amends. In the US, exoneries face that too. 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:24.200 There's no automatic compensation in most states. You often have 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:28.119 to sue, which can be difficult, and even when compensation 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:32.960 is available, it's often very limited. That's not to mention 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:39.560 the reputational stain. For me even ten years after my exoneration, 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:44.480 many people around the world continue to doubt my innocence, 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:49.399 and in England exoneries have to prove their innocence to 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:53.480 get payment. The overturning of their conviction is not enough. 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:57.560 People have lost decades of their lives and then been 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:03.439 left with nothing to help rebuild. There's a quiet cruelty 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:07.240 in that logic. If the court's got it wrong, the 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:12.040 least the system could do is help people start again. Instead, 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:16.840 many are left to crowdfund their recovery while officials protect 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:24.879 the myth that justice never falters. But sometimes those myths crack, 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:29.119 not because the courts reopen a case, but because the 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:30.440 public takes an interest. 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:34.320 The media can be, you know, kind of the wrongly convicted. 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:37.719 It is the lifeline. You know that there is no 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:40.199 kind of wrongful toleration that I know of that hasn't 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:43.359 involved at an engage media pushing at the doors of 0:18:43.400 --> 0:18:43.960 the courts. 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:46.800 But the problem is the media is, for. 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:50.120 Some reasons to become increasingly disengaged, and we've definitely suffered from 0:18:50.200 --> 0:18:52.320 that on this side of the Atlantic. I don't know 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:55.119 if that's true for you, but that's our experience. You 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:59.760 just need the attention of the media, the relentless of 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:03.720 the press, to make any kind of change. The irony ears, 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:07.080 the CCRC, the Case of Review Commission, the Prescriture Justice 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:10.439 watchdog will say, we will not respond to media campaigns. 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:13.680 Quite right, you know, just because someone is sympathetic to 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:16.600 the media, why should their case be treated any differently. 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:20.440 But you absolutely do need the engagements of the media 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:22.280 to make any difference here, really do. 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:27.320 On the flip side, the headlines that helped convict someone 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:33.320 can make exoneration almost impossible. Once a story becomes a 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:37.719 national obsession, it's hard for new evidence to compete with 0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:42.600 what people think they already know. I dealt with this firsthand. 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:46.840 Once a narrative like the Angel Faced Killer takes hold, 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:51.360 changing that story is like trying to stop an avalanche 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:52.840 halfway down the mountain. 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:55.320 There will have been journalists who sat through the Lucy 0:19:55.400 --> 0:19:58.560 let Be trial. There are journalists who sat through trials 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:01.879 that I've written about quite recently. And what happens is 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:05.720 when someone is convicted, that becomes the truth, that becomes 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:10.080 the biblical truth, the only narrative. And in an adversarial 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:13.560 justice system, as I described, where you get a prosecution 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:16.600 narrative versus a defense narrative, and you don't get that 0:20:16.680 --> 0:20:19.959 kind of commitment to pursuing the truth necessarily. It's very 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:22.960 very dangerous. It does worry me that the media is 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:25.320 uncritical when it sits through the trials or else there 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:27.800 is a responsibility, isn't there to the media to pick 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:30.480 up afterwards? But what we saw with the Lucy let 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:32.600 Be conviction, it seems to me, was a very fixed 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:36.480 narrative and that's very very hard to shift. It is shifting, 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:38.679 i think, but it's very hard to shift. 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:44.800 When the public pays attention, things can shift. In Britain. 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:48.800 That happened with the post Office scandal, a massive miscarriage 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:52.879 of justice that saw hundreds of postal workers wrongly convicted 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:57.840 after a computer system falsely accused them of theft. It 0:20:57.880 --> 0:21:01.639 took years of reporting, proto test and public anger to 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:05.520 put it right. Stories like that remind us that justice 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:10.120 doesn't always start in courtrooms. It often begins with ordinary 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:14.119 people who refuse to be silent. But what would it 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:18.160 take to make those stories less rare and the system 0:21:18.640 --> 0:21:25.080 less defensive? If there's a thread running through every story 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:31.240 of wrongful conviction, it's resistance, the system's resistance to being 0:21:31.320 --> 0:21:37.320 wrong and people's resistance to giving up. There is hope 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:42.080 for reform, but only if that resistance shifts from defending 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:47.760 the system to defending the truth, and that includes the media. 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:50.360 Well, I think journalists have got to find their own 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:52.119 position on it. But I do think they need to 0:21:52.119 --> 0:21:56.240 be more open minded about cases being miscarriages of justice 0:21:56.320 --> 0:21:59.800 and more critical thinking the idea that journalists sat through 0:21:59.800 --> 0:22:04.000 this trial and they were there and if she is innocent, 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:08.800 then it does raise questions about kind of challenging these 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:11.320 narratives that we talked about. I think the let Be 0:22:11.400 --> 0:22:14.240 case is really interesting because it kind of potentially shows 0:22:14.480 --> 0:22:17.960 the worst and best of journalism. Juralisa there in a 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:20.920 formal sense to deliver open justice and make sure that 0:22:21.080 --> 0:22:23.400 justice is done. They're there in court, you know, they're 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:26.439 thereby proxy to represent the people. That's one of the 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.239 ideas that we have in the UK, This notion, the 0:22:29.280 --> 0:22:33.840 firm sense of open justice, hugely challenged by the massive 0:22:33.920 --> 0:22:36.359 decrease of interest on the palf of the media. 0:22:36.160 --> 0:22:38.000 For these cases. I mean, one of the issues that 0:22:38.040 --> 0:22:38.920 we have is. 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:42.520 That media organization's newspapers, broadcasters just don't have the money 0:22:42.560 --> 0:22:44.359 to have people sitting in court these days. 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:49.000 In England, a right to appeal sounds like a simple idea, 0:22:49.720 --> 0:22:53.840 but it would mean a fundamental change in mindset. Instead 0:22:53.840 --> 0:22:57.880 of treating appeals as rare exceptions, they become a part 0:22:57.960 --> 0:23:02.440 of how the system keeps itself up. Honest, not every 0:23:02.480 --> 0:23:07.760 system has this fault. In Italy, for instance, appeals are guaranteed. 0:23:08.520 --> 0:23:11.280 It's one of the few things about my experience with 0:23:11.320 --> 0:23:14.439 their justice system that was better than it would have 0:23:14.480 --> 0:23:18.960 been in England or the US. In the US, there's 0:23:19.160 --> 0:23:23.960 technically a right to appeal, but it's limited, especially after 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:28.199 the first round. Habeas corpus petitions are supposed to be 0:23:28.240 --> 0:23:33.080 a safeguard, but they're narrow and procedural. Once you're convicted. 0:23:33.560 --> 0:23:38.240 The law values closure over correction. That's what England and 0:23:38.320 --> 0:23:44.040 America share. But John says he sees signs of change, 0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:47.320 particularly in the case of Lucy let Be. 0:23:48.760 --> 0:23:51.040 It kind of feels that the media is really re 0:23:51.160 --> 0:23:53.879 engaging in a way that it hasn't done since the 0:23:54.359 --> 0:23:57.200 bad old days of those terrible cases like the Birmingham 0:23:57.240 --> 0:24:00.520 six and the Guildford four. People are outraged and of 0:24:00.560 --> 0:24:04.640 course they get attacked by the legal establishment, and it's 0:24:04.680 --> 0:24:07.919 been very interesting to see the legal establishments or representatives 0:24:07.960 --> 0:24:11.400 the legal establishments speaking out about their concerns as well 0:24:11.520 --> 0:24:15.440 up which I think is kind of unprecedented. Former Supreme 0:24:15.480 --> 0:24:18.560 Court judge has spoken out about concerns about the let 0:24:18.600 --> 0:24:22.320 Be case. We've had conservative former government ministers talking out 0:24:22.359 --> 0:24:26.359 about it as well. That comes from that engaged media 0:24:26.400 --> 0:24:28.760 that I was describing before. You know it creates that 0:24:28.920 --> 0:24:30.280 support for the campaign. 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:37.359 There's a humility in that the idea that justice isn't 0:24:37.440 --> 0:24:41.359 perfect and doesn't need to be. It just needs to 0:24:41.400 --> 0:24:46.760 be honest enough to correct itself. John says he's learned 0:24:46.800 --> 0:24:51.720 something over years of reporting these cases that justice isn't 0:24:51.800 --> 0:24:56.560 only about courts and commissions. It's about the collective will 0:24:57.080 --> 0:24:59.480 to keep asking questions. 0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:01.840 What we kind of need, I think in our day 0:25:01.880 --> 0:25:04.520 and age is a justice system that has a bit 0:25:04.520 --> 0:25:06.760 more humility. I think we can all take it. The 0:25:06.840 --> 0:25:10.119 idea that mistakes are made, that they are recognized, and 0:25:10.160 --> 0:25:13.920 they're done efficiently and swiftly. I think that's what people 0:25:13.960 --> 0:25:17.840 would expect from the justice system. 0:25:17.960 --> 0:25:20.320 We're going to take a short break for now, but 0:25:20.440 --> 0:25:23.760 it's for a good reason. I'm actually in the UK. 0:25:24.480 --> 0:25:27.119 I've been meeting with people directly connected to the case 0:25:27.440 --> 0:25:30.320 and having some incredible conversations that I can't wait to 0:25:30.359 --> 0:25:33.760 share with you. So stay with us for the next 0:25:33.840 --> 0:25:40.800 episodes of Doubt the Case of Lucy Letpie. Doubt the 0:25:40.840 --> 0:25:43.639 Case of Lucy let Bee is brought to you by Vespucci, 0:25:44.000 --> 0:25:48.919 iHeart Podcasts and Knox Robinson Productions. I've been your host 0:25:49.080 --> 0:25:54.840 Amanda Knox. This episode was written by Joe Meek. The 0:25:54.880 --> 0:25:59.520 co producer was Lucy Ditchmond. The assistant producer was Amy Gill. 0:26:00.160 --> 0:26:05.080 Senior producer is Natalia Rodriguez. The sound designer is Tom Biddle. 0:26:05.760 --> 0:26:09.119 The theme music was written by Tom Biddle. Story editing 0:26:09.160 --> 0:26:13.560 by Kathleen Goldhar. Legal advice was provided by Jack Browning. 0:26:14.040 --> 0:26:18.640