May 2023: In Discussion With The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) & John Curtis On Candour & Practicing What He Preaches

On the 14th October 2009 the CCRC referred the murder conviction of actually, factually guilty murderer Simon Hall to the court of appeal (CoA).

The CCRC’s statement of reasons as to why they made their decision to refer his murder conviction to the CoA can be read in full by tapping on the button below;

On the 21st January 2010 Jon Robins wrote an article for the Times headed Criminal Cases Review Commission comes under fire. The opening two paragraphs of his article read;

NOTE: Jon Robins is mentioned in the following Parts, which can be opened and read by tapping on each button below;

On the 4th May 2023 there was a seminar, chaired by Paul Taylor, which apparently provided “an overview of the CCRC’s powers and procedures with a spotlight on recent referrals”.

Jon Robins (referred to above) was an attendee at the seminar as he was mentioned by Paul Taylor at around 3:31

On the panel were John Curtis now ‘head of legal’ at the CCRC, Helen Pitcher chair of the CCRC and Robert Ward a commissioner at the CCRC.

At around 24:54 here John Curtis, who was the case review manager at the CCRC on actually, factually, guilty killer Simon Hall’s case/conviction prior to the 2010 appeal, and during the second CCRC review up to 2013, stated;

Erm I would like to say how much we value eh submissions from students, people that do the pro bono work, charities

Eh it is always appreciated

Eh and it, you know great experience for the, for the students involved as well

Statement by John Curtis – 4th May 2023

Paul Taylor asked (at around 35:45 here);

Erm John

Erm a practical point

When erm you’ll look at wha..

When people are putting in applications submissions

What are the erm

What’s the commission looking for

Paul Taylor – 4th May 2023

John Curtis replied;

So eh

Three things eh really

One is timeliness, so has there been an appeal

Erm if there hasn’t

Please try to identify what’s exceptional

Wha.. do you need out assistance to get material

Erm is there extreme vulnerability is there something else about your case that is exceptional

If there isn’t eh

Please consider going to the court of appeal

And the court is actually looking at its own version of an easy read form to increase accessibility there

Erm so that’s the first thing

The second thing is focus on something new, a new argument, some new information

Eh we don’t expect people to have it

You know that’s as much our job as theirs to go off and get it

There if you can point us towards what you think is new eh where we could look that also helps

Erm and the third part I think is candour

Eh everything has to be fact checked

Erm we will look at things from a critical perspective, things won’t be taken at face value

So there is no advantage in keeping back expert, expert reports or witness statements that were adverse to you at trial erm

And erm pretending that those don’t exist

Eh like any good advocate, acknowledge the weaknesses in your argument and head them off up front

So those, those three things really help Erm

John Curtis – 4th May 2023

Then at around 55:10 John Curtis responds to someone from a UK innocence project stating:

Well done for working for the innocence project

We, we as I said I think it’s a great experience for students and it, it’s very helpful to us when people get the support

So, it’s new information or new argument

And sometimes you can have the same argument with some new information

And sometimes you can have the same information with the new argument

So, there are creative ways of thinking about things and it, it might be that yes the fibre evidence was looked at, at trial but the new bit is there’s been some developments

Likewise a point about joint enterprise might have been argued at trail but

Pre Jogee so, so there’s a new argument on the same factual matrix

So we’d like to think that if something went wrong

Eh it can be corrected

Even if it’s not new

There is , there is that exceptional circumstances provision as well

If.. if’s.. if there was a misunderstanding then it can still be put right

‘Cos it, it’s much more common to say

We know this point has been argued but we’ll argue the same point again with some additional evidence or some additional authority from new case law

Does that help

John Curtis – 4th May 2023

At around 1:21:57 John Curtis went on to say;

Inevitably things get missed but do people turn a blind eye to investigative work

No not in my experience

We, we want to uncover miscarriages of justice

John Curtis – 4th May 2023

Read more on the fraud of the criminal cases review commission and the innocence fraud of murderer Simon Hall and his enablers by tapping on the buttons below;