Heidi Blake

The controversy that came to a head as Jeremy Bamber was still waiting for news had nothing to do with his own case.

It had its roots in another wrongful conviction story, that of a former security guard named Andrew Malkinson, who'd served 17 years for a rape he didn't commit.

Andrew Malkinson suffered one of the worst miscarriages of justice of modern times.

Malkinson had finally been exonerated in 2023 after his lawyers commissioned DNA tests, and it turned out that police and prosecutors had known for at least 14 years that another man's DNA was found on the victim's clothing.

The CCRC had twice rejected his applications for an appeal, despite glaring evidence that he was innocent.

Outside the court, Malkinson said that he had been kidnapped by the state.

In the months that followed, more cases were reported, where it turned out that the CCRC had overlooked evidence that could have exonerated innocent people.

As public outrage grew and scrutiny of the organisation intensified, it became clear that the CCRC's effectiveness had been seriously hampered by brutal funding cuts.

It had lost more than a third of its budget in recent years, and yet commissioners, whose hours had typically been reduced to working just one day a week from home, had seen their caseloads double.

As Jeremy Bamber was waiting on news of his case, the organisation's chair was forced to resign.

Then, this spring, its chief executive was summoned before Parliament and grilled by MPs on the organisation's failings.

Everything from its low rate of referrals to the Court of Appeal, around 2% of all cases.

Fewer than 2% is not a huge number, is it?

I know those numbers are quite small.

To how rarely is leadership actually showed up at work?

I'm probably in the office maybe one or two days every couple of months or so.

Yeah.

So we are not an office-based organisation anymore.

That's Edward Garnier, a prominent member of the House of Lords and former Solicitor General.

Lord Garnier co-chaired a previous parliamentary review of the CCRC, which raised a number of red flags.