Chief accused of ‘half-hearted’ defence of review body after Malkinson case
Karen Kneller defended her position as she appeared before MPs.
The head of a legal body heavily criticised for its handling of the Andrew Malkinson case has been accused of giving a “half-hearted” defence of the organisation in the wake of its challenges.
Karen Kneller, chief executive of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, insisted she and her colleagues were the right people for the job as she faced questions from MPs on Tuesday.
It comes as chairwoman of the body, Helen Pitcher, eventually resigned from her role in January following Mr Malkinson’s case, but claimed she had been scapegoated.
Giving evidence to the Commons’ Justice Committee, she appeared alongside the CCRC’s casework operations director Amanda Pearce.
Chairman of the committee Andy Slaughter said: “I’m afraid I found your defence of what is to us a hugely important organisation, I’m sure it’s hugely important to you, has been pretty half-hearted, and has been really a reflection that things are going pretty well, apart from one or two difficult cases.
“And where that leaves me, comment or not as you wish, to ask whether you really feel now, given everything that’s happened, that you are the right people to lead this organisation forward.”
Ms Kneller said on behalf of herself and Ms Pearce that “I think we are absolutely the right people to lead this organisation”.
During the hearing, the legal boss urged the committee to judge the CCRC’s performance across all its casework, and “not only those cases which get into the headlines, which is a tiny, tiny minority of our casework”.
The independent body, currently tasked with reviewing the convictions of serial child killer Lucy Letby, was heavily criticised for its handling of Mr Malkinson’s case, one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
Mr Malkinson served 17 years in prison for a rape he did not commit, and was knocked back twice by the CCRC until his legal team carried out crucial DNA testing that was then repeated by the commission and led to his release.
A review found that he could have been released 10 years earlier if the CCRC had obtained new DNA evidence as early as 2009, and thousands of cases are being reviewed in the wake of the bungled handling of the case.
Before Ms Pitcher’s resignation, she had apologised to Mr Malkinson in April 2024, nine months after his conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal in July 2023.
The committee heard from the CCRC chiefs that they did not know when they would be getting an interim chairperson as they are not involved in the process.
On Tuesday, Ms Kneller also personally apologised to Mr Malkinson for the first time during the hearing.
Asked whether she would like to apologise, she said: “Without doubt, we got that case wrong. Mr Malkinson was failed.
“We made mistakes in that case. We apologised, the organisation apologised.
“I think the decisions made then around when to apologise are probably decisions that would not be made today.
“So absolutely, I extend my apology to Mr Malkinson. Everyone in the organisation deeply regrets what happened on that case.
“I can’t begin to think of the impact that this has had on him.
“I mean the double impact of, you know, serving a sentence, suffering miscarriage of justice, and then the way we handled his case.”
Following the evidence, Mr Slaughter also told the CCRC chief he was “quite shocked” by the remote working structure of the organisation.
Ms Kneller had told the committee the CCRC is no longer an office-based organisation which has boosted its ability to recruit for specialist roles from across the UK.
Instead she spends one or two days in the Birmingham-based office every two months.
But Mr Slaughter said: “But given what’s happened with your previous chair, the Malkinson case and other matters that have come to light, if I were the chief executive here, I would be in every day when there’s issues, I’d be asking my staff to be there, I’d be working with those staff.
“I’d be trying to rebuild the organisation so that the commissioners and the board had a much more hands on role in that way.
“And that doesn’t seem to have happened at all.”
But Ms Kneller defended the move, saying without remote working the CCRC would not be doing the amount of casework needed to make referrals because the vacancies would not have been filled.
Ms Pearce added: “There is no magic to working in the office. Our staff are connected. They can speak to each other at any time.
“We discovered that it is perfectly possible to do a good job working remotely. That has allowed us to attract talent from across the UK.”
