Which I find strange given he wrote and published the following:
Guilt, non-guilt and innocence: what will Strasbourg decide? - Jon Robins
“In May 2011, the supreme court rejected the government's contention that only those who could prove their innocence could be entitled to compensation in R (Adams) v Secretary of State for Justice. It was in that ruling that Hale (and others) grappled with the meaning of "miscarriage of justice". The majority (five to four) held that a miscarriage of justice had occurred when "a new or newly-discovered fact" showed conclusively that the "evidence against a defendant has been so undermined that no conviction could possibly be based upon it". Allen argues that such a test is contrary to her right under article 6(2) of the European Convention to be presumed innocent.
The Adams ruling has subdivided miscarriages into three, possibly four, categories: first, where the applicant can effectively prove innocence; second, where there is evidence that undermines the safety of the conviction; third where the fresh evidence might be sufficient for the court to quash the conviction but there may be other evidence upon which a jury could still convict; and fourth, a purely technical quashing of a conviction.
Last month there was a three-day hearing in the high court considering compensation in a number of cases including Barry George, who spent eight years in prison after being wrongly convicted of the murder of TV presenter Jill Dando. "The public might think, as they watch someone being released from the court of appeal, that they would be compensated by the state for being wrongfully convicted and for all the time they have served in prison," comments Mark Newby, who specialises in miscarriage cases. The solicitor is representing Ian Lawless, one of the lead cases alongside George. "That expectation is invariably not met. Under the current Ministry of Justice scheme only one award has been made post-Adams."
Newby has another case stayed pending the ruling by the Strasbourg court on the Allen case. If the European court decides in favour of Allen, the lawyer believes this will help the other compensation cases, with the possible exception of category four cases.
I wrote about the campaign to reinstate the ex gratia scheme last year. Frankly, persuading people to support a campaign for adequate compensation for the wrongfully convicted is never going to be a hugely popular crusade — and trying to persuade ministers to prioritise miscarriages over other voter-friendly and cash-starved causes nigh on impossible. Nonetheless the campaign is both right and one of fundamental importance — the state should be properly held to account for its errors.
The shocking attitude of the last government towards miscarriages of justice can best be summed up by Tony Blair's notorious sound bite: "It is perhaps the biggest miscarriage of justice in today's system when the guilty walks away unpunished."
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/nov/21/guilt-innocence-strasbourg-lorraine-allen
His selective reporting is a classic example of publication bias, which leads to a distorted representation and is suggestive of tunnel vision.
”Miscarriage compensation test case succeeds as other claimants fail”
25 January 2013The Administrative Court has this afternoon handed down its judgment in R (on the application of Ali & Ors,) v Secretary of State for Justice [2013] EWHC 72 (Admin) (25 January 2013), which will affect the future of Miscarriage of Justice Compensation for future claimants. Of the five claimants only Ian Lawless succeeded. Mr Lawless was represented by Garden Court North Chambers’ Matthew Stanbury, instructed by Mark Newby of QualitySolicitors Jordans. In the original criminal appeal he was represented by Chambers’ Mark Barlow.
Mr Lawless successfully appealed his conviction for murder in 2009 based on the fact that the only evidence against him was his own false confessions given due to mental health problems he had at the time.
The Secretary of State refused to pay him compensation and as a result he was compelled to bring a challenge against the decision . This was always a strong case in which there was simply no other evidence upon which a jury could have convicted him . The Secretary of State sought to advance a wholly unrealistic argument to suggest this could be the case which was dismissed by the Court who paid tribute to Matthew Stanbury’s “admirably succinct submissions” [179].
The Court of Appeal ruled that the Secretary of State’s decision to refuse compensation in the case of Ian Lawless be quashed and Mr Lawless’s entitlement to compensation must be reconsidered by the Secretary of State in light of this judgment [187].
In an article published today on The Justice Gap “Not Innocent Enough to be Compensated?”,
Mark Newby and Matthew Stanbury write:
“
Current and future claimants will likely find that their prospects of success are not improved in any substantial way by this decision; however they will at least now be able to have some confidence that the secretary of state will be required to respect judicial rulings on the state of the evidence, and to have proper regard to the rules of evidence that applied in the original and any subsequent trial. They should at the very least know that if the Secretary of State does seek to go behind such rulings, he must give reasons for doing so, that may be amenable to judicial review, and that he should only make such a departure in exceptional circumstances.”…
“Overall, they remain faced with a system in which the successive secretaries of state have demonstrated themselves only too willing to find ways to avoid paying out compensation no matter how hard the search for reasons to do so.”
https://gcnchambers.co.uk/miscarriage-compensation-test-case-succeeds-as-other-claimants-fail/“Lawless was convicted of murder after making various "confessions" to third parties, including regulars in a pub and a taxi driver,
His conviction was later ruled unsafe after fresh medical evidence revealed he had a "pathological need for attention".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-21204099
Ian Lawless was represented by Mark Newby. More on Ian Lawless here https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/grimsby-news/grimsby-town-fan-who-cleared-1187985
Last May Mark Newby wrote an article which was published in the justice gap, ironically, given the Barry George case as one example, he stated:
“”No one wants to see a conviction overturned on technical grounds compensated”
”The Court of Appeal needs to acknowledge miscarriages of justice – and ensure that they don’t occur in the future”(2018)
https://www.thejusticegap.com/the-court-of-appeal-needs-to-acknowledge-miscarriages-of-justice-and-ensure-that-they-dont-occur-in-the-future/