Lord Hope recalls being ‘deeply disturbed’ in criminal appeal

Lord Hope of Craighead

The crossbench peer was speaking in the Lords in support of amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which contains a raft of measures intended to update the criminal justice system in England and Wales.

Amendment 130, moved by Lord Paddick, would pave the way for a duty of candour in police “dealings with the victims of crime and the relatives of victims of crime”.

Lord Hope told peers: “I look at the situation from an unusual perspective and with the unusual experience of sitting as the senior judge in Scotland in a criminal appeal.

“It was a case of murder, and I was not able — because I was sitting in a court where all the evidence was already out — to develop what was at the back of my mind, which was that the police had identified the wrong individual, who was then accused and convicted.”

He added: “I will not go into the facts of the case for obvious reasons, but it struck me that the court at that late stage was powerless to deal with what I thought had not been a frank and fair police investigation.

“I make that point simply because stages are reached where the situation is beyond recall, but I was deeply disturbed by what had happened in that case and could not do anything about it.”

As such, he welcomed the “steps that are being taken to improve the standard of candour among the police at all stages in the investigation of crime and its aftermath”.