47 sex trials collapsed in just 6 weeks over errors in evidence
BRITAIN’S top prosecutor apologised yesterday after it was revealed that 47 rape and sex attack cases were dropped because evidence had been withheld from defence lawyers.
Alison Saunders, the outgoing head of the Crown Prosecution Service, told MPs that disclosure errors were a ‘long-standing systemic issue’ that prosecutors and police had failed to tackle.
She said victims and those wrongly accused deserved an apology after a review of suspects charged with rape and sexual offences found failings in a string of cases which were halted because evidence was missed or not shown to defence lawyers.
In some instances the accused were just days from trial when they were told that texts, emails or messages on social media had been uncovered that proved their innocence.
The review was launched in January after the collapse of a series of trials because police and prosecutors did not share key information which proved the defendants’ innocence.
In a short review covering just six weeks, CPS lawyers looked at 3,637 rape and sex attack cases where a defendant was facing trial having pleaded not guilty.
It found disclosure of evidence was a concern in 47 prosecutions which were then scrapped.
A total of 47 men and one woman were cleared – 14 of whom had been locked up in custody awaiting trial.
Yesterday Miss Saunders said she accepted prosecutors had in some cases shared material too late, meaning defendants could be on bail or remanded in
DRAGGED THROUGH HELL BY RAPE POLICE
custody for many months before their cases were dropped.
Asked whether they were owed an apology, she told the Commons justice committee: ‘Absolutely. I feel every single failure. It is not something that we want. We have been very clear about where our failings are. We will apologise.’
The CPS and the National Police Chiefs Council have refused to say whether any officer or lawyer faces disciplinary action as a result.
Yesterday legal experts said the figure is likely to be the ‘tip of the iceberg’ as the CPS review was limited to sexual offences and did not examine past convictions where there could have been a miscarriage of justice.
Angela Rafferty QC, chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, said: ‘For the CPS to question the reliability of not just a few but dozens of live rape and sexual offence cases out of a lim- ited sample size … will inevitably cause great consternation that some innocent people are already in prisons and many guilty may be walking free.
‘We await the wider parliamentary review of the whole disclosure system that is now due – dealing with all criminal cases including sexual offences.’
Julia Smart, defence barrister for Liam Allan, whose prosecution last December propelled the issue of disclosure into the limelight, yesterday called for an independent inquiry.
Miss Smart had to comb through 40,000 texts police had hidden to discover that the student, 22, was innocent of rape and sexual assault. Mr Allan was later cleared at Croydon Crown Court.
Of the latest review, Miss Smart said: ‘That 47 cases had gone wrong before they got to trial and 14 people were wrongly remanded in custody is deeply worrying and suggests that this is just the tip of the iceberg.’
The CPS review found that in some instances phone evidence had not been examined until after the suspect had been charged, and material was later found that was so damning there was no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.
Mike Cunningham, chief executive of the College of Policing, said officers were being trained to change attitudes that sharing evidence is a ‘bureaucratic add-on’ or a ‘blinking tortuous piece of work’.
Assistant chief constable Stuart Prior, who is coordinating the police response, said: ‘We’ve got to get disclosure right. We cannot allow mistakes to impact so greatly on people’s lives.’
A series of measures are now being introduced, including new training for prosecutors and police and actions to deal with disclosure at an earlier stage in proceedings. Technology will also be developed to help sift through communications data.