Miscarriage Compensation

Justice for the Wrongfully Convicted

Miscarriage Compensation

Compensating the Wrongfully Convicted

This page is dedicated to ongoing concerns over the miscarriage compensation scheme and the Government amendments to the scheme which now make it virtually impossible for any claimant to achieve compensation. It will be regularly updated.

There is a long history to the ongoing legal challenges which have now been heard before 7 Justices at the Supreme Court on 9th and 10th May 2018. Judgment was given by the Supreme Court refusing the case.

The Judgment - https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2019/2.html

The case is now in the European Court of Human Rights and is currently going through the friendly settlement stage. More information will be given about future hearings in Strasbourg soon.

The Scheme under which the Government is required to pay compensation has been through an ever restrictive approach and in recent years following the case of Ali and others, a new statutory test was imposed.

Previously the test effectively required a successful appellant to show that as a result of the newly discovered fact (which led to the successful appeal) no jury properly directed would convict.

The new test, now known as 1ZA, imposed that an applicant must show beyond reasonable doubt that as a result of the newly discovered fact, they did not commit the offence.

It would be apparent to any reader that this test effectively requires the person to prove their innocence and in almost every case it would be practicably impossible to do so.

The issues had been visited previously by the European Court who held that if a domestic scheme required a person to prove innocence, that would amount to an infringement of Article 6 (2). In the Case of Allen it found it did not but that was before the change in the law.

It is the current claimants cases Nealon (represented by QS Jordans) and Hallam (represented by Birnberg Peirce) that the scheme does infringe those rights.

As Mark Newby said:

"How we deal with those we have wrongfully convicted after their convictions are quashed says everything about the sort of society we are. It should be our obligation to compensate those whom we have wrong fully taken large parts of their lives away from."

Nealon is represented by Dinah Rose QC and Matt Stanbury

Hallam is represented by Heather Williams QC and Adam Straw