These answers are what I used for my final unit 3 internal assessment, I only took in these documents and I was awarded 100/100 on this exam. These answers are based upon information from the WJEC Criminology textbook and feedback from my teachers. These documents contain ALL information required t...
A safe verdict is a verdict which has been the result of a fair trial, the evidence provided is
admissible, credible and reliable and it has been obtained legally. Moreover, both the
prosecution and defence have a chance to argue their cases and there has been cross
examination of the witness. Lastly, the law has also been used to protect defendants rights.
However, trials do not always end in a safe verdict, verdicts can be unsafe and lead to a
miscarriage of justice.
An unsafe verdict refers to the judicial system failings, this could be problems with evidence
or judge/jury misdirection in decision making. An example of the type of problems that could
occur is if there is possibility of contamination of the physical evidence given at trial, leading
to a defendant being possibly unsafely convicted. Another example of this is displayed in the
Sally Clarke case, where the testimonial evidence did not disclose the full truth and this
consequently portrayed Sally Clarke as guilty. The expert witness did not disclose the
possibility of a lower tract respiratory infection found during the examination of Sally’s son.
Moreover, trials can appear ‘unsafe’ after new facts or issues come to light after the trial has
finished. This is displayed through the case of Huwe Burton. Burton was convicted in 1991
for the murder of his mother when he was a teenager. He spent 19 years in prison, despite
being innocent and was forced to confess by the police and detectives. These detectives
had a history of using interrogative tactics and used these techniques on Huwe. They
isolated him from his father and threatened him with additional charges. The prosecution
heavily relied on this confession, and this therefore was an unsafe verdict. Moreover, the
brief contains an unsafe verdict, as evidence was discovered improperly as a warrant to
search the suspects house had not been given in time. As well as this police claimed they
found evidence in the second search of the suspects house, and not the first time. This leads
to an unsafe verdict as it is possible the evidence was illegally planted there. Moreover, the
suspect was given life imprisonment and therefore this was arguably an unsafe verdict as
the suspect was convicted of evidence that was possibly not obtained legally, and evidence
needs to be discovered and collected legally to ensure a safe verdict.
Moreover, a miscarriage of justice is a term used when a person is convicted and punished
for a crime that they did not commit. Moreover, most trials can appear ‘unsafe’ after new
facts or issues come to light after the trial has finished. An example of this is the Birmingham
6, this case was a large miscarriage of justice where a group of men were convicted and
punished based on a forced confession. These six men were falsely convicted for the 1974
Birmingham pub bombings, due to the extreme pressure from the public the police took
extreme lengths to find the suspects. However, this was took too far and these men were
forced to confess and endured torture from the police officers, photos were recovered of the
six showing heavily bruised and cut faces. These men spent 16 years in prison and one man
of the six stated that prison was ‘brutal and evil’ and that the UK government is an ‘ugly
corrupt establishment’. The prosecution relied on evidence that they had traces of bomb
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