Kevin Kerrigan

Unfitness to Plead: Expanding the Scope of 'Objective Evidence' on the 'Trial of the Facts': R v Wells, Masud, Hone and Kail [2015] EWCA Crim 2

The four conjoined appeals dealt with in this judgment raise similar issues concerning the operation of the ‘trial of the facts’ procedure, which follows a finding that the accused is unfit to plead.

Real Possibility or Fat Chance

For the 96 per cent of applicants to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) whose cases are rejected without being referred to an appeal court the answer to the question in the chapter heading is clear. For them, and an increasing number of campaigners, lawyers and academics, the CCRC has come to be seen not as a solution, but as a contributor to systemic injustice in criminal law. Initially high expectations among prisoners, families and their representatives have developed into cynical rejection of the CCRC as a maintainer of the status quo and a means of taking the political sting out of the continuing reality of wrongful convictions.

Corporate Interests and the Privacy Bandwagon

This article examines the way in which the law of confidentiality is developing to take account of human privacy interests following the implementation of the Human Rights Act 1998. It argues that the expansion of the traditional remedy could lead to an unexpected enlargement of corporate privacy rights and suggests that a more appropriate response is to create a separate and conceptually distinct tort of privacy.