Introduction

Abstract

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is a recent development in a long line of attempted remedies against miscarriages of justice. It was established by the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, replacing the Criminal Case Unit of the C3 Division of the Home Office where the Home Secretary (C3) had the power to order reinvestigations of alleged miscarriages of justice and send them back to the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) (CACD) under s. 17 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968. The CCRC followed a recommendation by the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice (RCCJ) in 1993 (see RCCJ, 1993) that was prompted by the public crisis of confidence in the entire criminal justice system (Colvin, 1994) that was caused by the cases of the Guildford Four (Conlon, 1990)¹ and the Birmingham Six (Hill and Hunt, 1995),² and a string of other notable cases in which Irish people were wrongly convicted upon suspicion of being connected with terrorist crimes that were committed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA).³