| Abstrakt: |
The right to fairness and access to appeals and reviews enshrined under the South African Constitution seeks to ensure that justice is served. In essence the Constitution and the law have put in place mechanisms to ensure that a miscarriage of justice through wrongful convictions does not occur. However, even within an ideally perfect legal system wrongful convictions would still occur. Therefore, it is not so much of the failings of a legal system that demand attention, but mechanisms to redress the results of such failings where evidence becomes available that a wrongful conviction occurred. In this context, this presentation considers the South African criminal procedural mechanisms for litigating innocence postconviction. The discussion focuses on the role of s 327 of the South African Criminal Procedure Act (CPA) and its apparent shortcomings in providing an avenue for victims of miscarriages of justice to litigate their innocence by adducing new evidence at any stage during their wrongful incarceration. By looking at developments in other jurisdiction such as England, where South African criminal procedure draws much of its history, and the North Carolina example which in itself was inspired by England, Wales and Northern Ireland Criminal Cases Review Commission, it is possible to make comparisons and draw invaluable lessons for the South African criminal justice system. Lessons from these foreign jurisdictions show that South African post-conviction criminal procedures need reform in line with the constitutional values of human dignity, equality before the law, openness and transparency. This research proposes an independent review of the current processes to assess the current post-conviction procedures under s 327. The review must look into the effectiveness of the current system and how it can be improved in line with new substantive legal provisions creating access to DNA evidence for post-conviction exonerations. Although the England, Wales and Ireland Criminal Cases Review Commission should not be slavishly followed, its operations and the process leading to its establishment certainly provide a good point of reference and invaluable lessons for the South African criminal justice system. A new independent mechanism that treats innocent victims of the failures of the criminal justice system with dignity, away from the current political process, is proposed to enable South African criminal justice to benefit fully from recent and upcoming advances in science and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
