The chief executive of a miscarriage of justice watchdog for England, Wales and Northern Ireland has resigned after serious failings in the case of Andrew Malkinson.
Karen Kneller, who had held the position since 2013, has left her job at the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) after one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history, it was announced on Wednesday.
Malkinson, who spent 17 years in prison for a rape in Greater Manchester that he did not commit, was cleared in July 2023. His case 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 report on the CCRC’s handling of the case in July last year laid bare “a catalogue of failures”, finding that Malkinson could have been exonerated almost a decade earlier. Thousands of cases are now being reviewed as a result of the botched process.
Writing in the Guardian after his release, Malkinson said he had left prison impoverished, “living on universal credit, homeless and in urgent need of mental health support from clinicians who would at last recognise what I had been through in the past 20 years”. The Ministry of Justice agreed to give Malkinson a payout, more than a year and a half after the court of appeal declared his innocence.
Kneller’s departure comes after a damning report on the leadership of the CCRC in May, in which the House of Commons justice committee said Kneller had provided it with unpersuasive evidence and her position was no longer tenable.
It said that the chief executive should follow in the footsteps of Helen Pitcher, who quit in January after an independent panel concluded she was no longer fit to be chair after the CCRC’s failings over Malkinson. Kneller claimed she had been scapegoated over the case.
The CCRC had continually failed to learn from its mistakes and its chief executive should follow the organisation’s chair out the door, MPs said.
Last month the former victims’ commissioner Dame Vera Baird became the interim chairperson of the CCRC, having been asked by the lord chancellor to carry out a review of the organisation.
“The CCRC has a vital role to play in the criminal justice system, but confidence in the organisation has been badly damaged. Confidence in our work must be restored. I thank Karen for her work at the CCRC over many years,” said Baird.