Repealing the Innocence Tax
It seems a strange question to ask but how much do you think it costs to be innocent of a crime?
Logically you might think that if you are innocent then there should be no cost at all but that is often not the case.
To give one example, Alexandru Stan was accused of being involved in a series of high-profile burglaries in late-2019. He was later acquitted but in the meantime he was evicted from his home and spent his life savings clearing his name.
No one is saying that criminal defence lawyers should not be paid for their work but whereas those who are convicted receive support via the probation service when they are released, there is no such help for the innocent even though they have also been through a traumatic ordeal.
In their wonderful book entitled, Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken, the Secret Barrister calls this phenomenon the Innocence Tax.
At this point you may be tempted to, reasonably, ask: what about costs orders? While it isn’t a hard and fast rule, in civil cases the losing side can often be expected to foot the bill for the side that wins, as well as their own.
Previously it was possible for an innocent defendant in a criminal case to recoup up to 90% of their legal fees after they were acquitted. This was all changed as a result of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 which is why the Secret Barrister describes the innocence tax as a “legacy of Chris Grayling” in the above tweet.
That legislation reduced the amount that could be recouped down to 0% of legal fees and while this was later changed so that an innocent defendant could get back as much as they could have had with legal aid, the decimation of legal aid meant that this was of little comfort to most.
The overall result is that since 2014, an innocent person has had to pay a debilitating price for the privilege of being declared innocent. It is another farcical aspect of our justice system that has now sadly become the norm.
A recent report by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspectorate of Constabulary, Sir Tom Winsor, once again urged the government to do away with the ‘innocence tax’ but this will undoubtedly fall on deaf ears. As the Secret Barrister points out, there is no electoral benefit in an effective justice system, only a cheaper one.
In the podcast this week we looked at a case where a local housing authority sought possession of a property before a fixed-term secure tenancy came to term. This required the Supreme Court to balance the terms of the agreement with the statutory protections offered to tenants and they came up with an interesting result.
Episode link: http://uklawweekly.com/2022-uksc-7/
Make a difference today,
Marcus