Innocent men may still be in prison for sex offences, says CPS chief

MORE men could have been wrongly jailed for sex offences because vital evidence was withheld from their lawyers, the new head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) indicated.

Max Hill refused to rule out the possibility, in contrast to his predecessor, Alison Saunders, who previously stated there were no further cases.

Asked if he could guarantee there were no innocent people in prison because of the prosecution failures, Mr Hill said: “It is impossible for me to know.”

A review of more than 3,600 cases, which was launched earlier this year after a number of rape cases collapsed because of the prosecution or police failure to pass information to defence teams, found problems with 47 cases with 14 defendants in custody at the time.

“That was a CPS review and there will be other reviews. Let me assure you that we are committed in this organisation to making sure that these errors are driven to an absolute minimum,” Mr Hill told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

When it was pointed out that his comments contradicted those of his predecessor, he replied: “I am aware of what she said. That was then, this is now. In any case in which an issue is raised about disclosure, whether pretrial, during the trial or post trial, we are committed to looking into that to find out if there is anything that is hidden.

“But in cases where no issue has been raised and the matter is concluded in a very large proportion of cases by the guilty plea of the individual on trial, then there doesn’t appear to be a problem, does there?”

Mr Hill also appeared to rule out demands by Richard Foster, the outgoing chairman of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, for a targeted review of previous CPS cases to establish if there were any more failings.