It's early to say, but my impression so far is that Jeremy has instructed his legal team to re-hash all the old Lomax-era innocence points. It's a vanilla case, but it won't fly with the current CCRC, let alone the appeal court. I remain of the view that a missed phone call from Nevill to the police is plausible, but it is at the far end of plausibility and must be put in the category of 'unlikely'. Unless something startling has been discovered in the intervening years, what the CCRC will be presented with on that point is no improvement on what they saw before.
My view is that Jeremy should not have been convicted and his convictions should have been quashed in 2002 and then a re-trial should have happened, probably ending with his acquittal. To an extent, Jeremy is a victim of the internal politics of the criminal justice system. Since perhaps the late 1990s (not long after its formation), the CCRC has been overly-cautious in referrals under pressure from the appellate judiciary who know they would otherwise be swamped with cases.
In my opinion, further reform is needed, possibly with the right for the CCRC to overturn convictions on its own account. The present system is odd in that it embodies a contradiction. The CCRC recently referred the Colin Norris convictions. Having done so, and having considered the test for referral, I must ask: what can the appeal courts add to the process that the CCRC has not already done? Perhaps the Norris case merits a second guess, given its gravity and seriousness, but there is a general question that I believe should be asked: if the CCRC think a conviction unsafe (which is what 'real possibility of deciding the conviction is unsafe' effectively means), then how can the appeal judges decide otherwise? What is it that the appeal judges know that the Commissioners don't?
Bafflingly, in the Bamber case the CCRC have contradicted themselves. They referred the case in 2001, but refused to refer in 2011. Are these convictions safe or not? If there is a real possibility that the appeal court will overturn the convictions, then does that not mean the convictions are unsafe?
Roch's suggestion that we re-listen to the podcasts and discuss any new points raised in them is a very sound idea. My problem is that I find the use of simulated voices in the podcasts incredibly grating and it's a struggle to listen to them. Jeremy really, really, really, really needs to politely and tactfully ask his Campaign Team if they could re-do those podcasts with natural voices. It doesn't matter if it's a voice from the Valleys or a broad Lancashire accent, or whatever. Amateur and rough-and-ready is fine - and may even be better than professional.
