UK Law Articles
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The Times
January 26 2000
DPP calls for retrial option in acquittals
BY FRANCES GIBB, LEGAL EDITOR
THE law should be changed to allow a "handful" of defendants acquitted of the most serious offences to be tried a second time, the Director of Public Prosecutions told MPs yesterday.
David Calvert-Smith, QC, said he favoured the change if it was restricted to the most serious offences, such as murder, rape or serious assault where there was "compelling" new scientific evidence or a confession.
The DPP, who heads the Crown Prosecution Service, said that he supported the double jeopardy rule, which in general prevents defendants from being tried twice. But rapid scientific advances in identification techniques made it more likely that new evidence would be found after trial.
The "Beauty in the Bath" and Dr Joan Francisco's murder were both cases where successful prosecutions were brought years after the events because of fresh scientific evidence, he told the Commons Home Affairs Committee. "Had the defendants in these cases been previously tried on circumstantial evidence and acquitted, under the current law a further trial on fresh DNA evidence would have been barred and the criminal justice system would have been powerless to protect the public."
A change in the law would also be in line with the increased emphasis now being placed on the rights of victims.
Mr Calvert-Smith insisted that police incompetence, as in the case of Stephen Lawrence, the murdered black teenager, should not be a reason to allow a case to be revisited. If the case had gone to trial, led to acquittals and later there had been new evidence, such as a confession, that would be different. But only in "exceptional circumstances" should the state have power to "have a second go".
He did not favour a time limit after which cases could not be revisited, nor a category of case based on the likely sentence. He would prefer instead that the proposal involve only the most serious offences, triable on indictment, with an option for Parliament to add crimes such as those involving drugs, to the list.
The committee of MPs are investigating a possible relaxation of the double jeopardy rule as proposed, subject to strict safeguards, by the Law Commission.
David Phillips, Chief Constable of Kent, told the MPs that he also favoured a change in the law. Advances in DNA testing allowed identification from a single sperm head with a probability factor of billions, not thousands. There had also been advances in fingerprinting, allowing prints to be taken from skin.
The prosecuting authorities were deterred by the law from looking at cases again. One reason was the "very high level of perjury in the courts and almost no defendants are convicted of perjury. It cannot be in the interest of justice that allows perjury with impunity to prosper."
Mr Phillips, who chairs the crime committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said there were more than 20,000 cases being contested in the courts in England and Wales a year, with a conviction rate of 57 per cent.
He said that he supported the general principle against the prosecution having a second go: "I don't think justice would be well-served if we could investigate cases indefinitely." But in some serious cases the law was "being brought into disrepute by the knowledge that someone manifestly guilty can evade conviction".
