All citizens accused of crime by the state should be entitled to fair treatment within the law of the land. Even when those in the system, including the courts, are absolutely convinced of guilt, they may still be wrong. Establishing that such a mistake was made took 16 years in Kiszco's case. Our system operates so as to stifle complaints rather than encouraging citizens to air their grievances. There will still be many ineffectively protesting their innocence in years to come.
All systems produce error.
This is predictable and the criminal justice system has a number of procedures designed to guard against error and to provide remedies when error occurs. Our argument is that these devices wrongly assume that mistakes are made relatively infrequently. They are wholly inadequate when it comes to achieving their ostensible aim of preventing, remedying and deterring malpractice. Until this situation is acknowledged and addressed, the Rule of Law will continue to be largely meaningless concept in the context of English criminal justice.