Compensation of victims of miscarriage of justice in a comparative perspective

Abstract

The research aims to examine the complex and polyhedral topic of miscarriage of justice in two different legal systems. Beginning from the English legal system it is clear that this expression is capable of a number of different meanings. Section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 provides that the Secretary of State for Justice shall pay compensation ‘when a person has been convicted of a criminal offence and when subsequently his conviction has been reversed or he has been pardoned on the ground that a new or newly discovered fact shows beyond reasonable doubt that there has been a miscarriage of justice’. It was enacted to give effect to Article 14(6) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966, which the United Kingdom ratified in May 1976. The research will pass to explore the same topic in Italian legal system. In Italy judicial wrongs can bring to the review of the sentence and to the compensation of the damage suffered by the victim of the judicial wrong. The rule of art. 630 of criminal procedure code provides for the hypotheses in which a definitive sentence can be revised. After the introduction of art. 533 criminal procedure code - operated by art. 5 of the law 20 February 2006 no 46 - also the criterion of "beyond any reasonable doubt" has become an express rule of Italian criminal process giving rise to the need to coordinate it with other constitutional principles such as the mentioned principle of due process of law. Given that the research focuses about how the application of these criteria must deal with respective specific legal contexts, taking into account, for example, the big gap between the procedures for forming judgments in the different legal systems.