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Dr Michael Naughton discusses miscarriages of justice on the BBC and in The Sun

20 May 2012

Dr Michael Naughton

... [the Hallam case] gives an insight into routine police misconduct and malpractice in our criminal justice system.

Dr Michael Naughton
Dr Michael Naughton, Senior Lecturer in the Law School and SPAIS, and a leading expert on miscarriages of justice, has been interviewed on the Today programme and quoted in both The Sun and on the BBC website, in the wake of the quashing by the Court of Appeal of the conviction of Sam Hallam, who spent more than seven years in prison for a murder he always denied committing.   According to the BBC, the Court of Appeal heard police had failed to check Hallam's alibi properly and used unreliable evidence to identify him.

Dr Naughton is the founder of Innocence Network UK, which undertakes investigations into alleged wrongful convictions through the Innocence Project that it established at the University of Bristol - the first innocence project in the UK - and Innocence Projects at numerous other universities in England. He noted that 100 cases were currently being worked on in 26 Innocence projects in universities around the country.  He also criticised the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) and called for its reform "so that it can be better placed to assist people who apply to it who might be innocent."