The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission and its Referrals to the Appeal Court: the First 10 Years

This paper aims to contribute to the debate on the role and function of Criminal Cases Review Commissions by presenting the results of an evaluation of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) undertaken to coincide with the tenth anniversary of its operation.(1) In the decade since its establishment, much has been written about the SCCRC and its English counterpart,(2) especially concerning the proper role of the Commissions and their relationship with the appeal court. Here we focus on the cases that the SCCRC referred back to the Scottish appeal court in its first 10 years of operation, analysing the statements of reasons given by the Commission for referral, the grounds of appeal subsequently relied upon by appellants and the attitude of the appeal court in determining these referred cases. As this paper will demonstrate, while there have been some exceptions, by and large the relationship between the SCCRC and the court has been a relatively harmonious one, despite the fact that the role played by the SCCRC in practice has gone some way beyond the mere sifting mechanism for fresh evidence appeals envisaged by some commentators.