CPIA 1996 disclosure — what the Crown disclosed, and what the defence never saw
Prosecution claim
The Crown complied with its disclosure obligations under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996. The defence received the unused material it was entitled to; the trial proceeded on the basis of a fair evidential playing field.
Counter-evidence
Post-conviction analysis of the disclosure trail has identified multiple categories of unused material that were not disclosed to the defence or were disclosed in a form that made effective use impossible. These include: complete Datix incident records for the unit across the indictment period (not just the extracts the Crown relied on); pharmacy-dispensing records that would have allowed independent verification of insulin stock movements; full nursing-staff rotas across all units (not just the ones selected for the shift chart); viral-testing records from the unit and the Trust's microbiology laboratory; maintenance and plumbing records corresponding to Mansutti's defence evidence; the Trust's internal mortality-review papers; and the RCPCH review's full working papers. Under section 3 of CPIA 1996 the Crown must disclose unused material that 'might reasonably be considered capable of undermining the case for the prosecution against the accused, or of assisting the case for the accused.' The CCRC application argues several categories of material fell within this obligation but were not disclosed or were disclosed late / in redacted form.
Disclosure is the quiet half of a criminal trial. What the defence never sees is often what makes the difference between a verdict the jury can safely reach and one it cannot.
What the jury heard
The jury was not told what material the Crown had chosen not to rely on, or what material the defence had sought and not received. This is standard; juries never see the disclosure framework. The post-conviction question is whether the disclosure regime was correctly applied.
What the Panel says
The Panel's scope is clinical. But the Panel's case-by-case identification of natural-cause differentials that are live on the clinical record — IVH, sepsis, thrombosis, NEC, viral outbreak — is itself evidence that material in the hospital's records would have supported the defence if fully disclosed and reviewed.
What independent experts add
- CPIA 1996 section 3 is the statutory test; the Attorney General's Guidelines on Disclosure expand on the duty in practice.
- Non-disclosure grounds have produced successful CCRC referrals and Court of Appeal quashings in multiple recent cases.
- The Post Office Horizon cases included significant non-disclosure findings; the parallel is procedural rather than factual.
- The defence's ability to test the Crown's case is directly proportional to the completeness of disclosure.
- Independent counsel and specialist academic commentators have flagged several specific disclosure categories as live CCRC-review issues.
- Thirlwall Inquiry document discovery has brought additional material into public view that was not before the criminal trial.
- The 2020 Attorney General's Guidelines require the prosecution to 'think defence' — imagine what a competent defence would want — when making disclosure decisions.
- Where disclosure has been incomplete, the CCRC has historically treated the gap as itself material to the 'real possibility' test under section 13 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995.