Another breakthrough in the Susan May case last week, one of a small number of alleged wrongful convictions that seemingly unravel and attract greater disquiet as the years pass. Last week the Guardian revealed how Greater Manchester police failed to follow up a "good suspect" (in their words)- a heroin addict with convictions for burgling the homes of elderly people. May served 12 years for the murder of her 89-year old aunt, a crime she has always insisted she never committed.

May addressed the recent Innocence Network UK (INUK) symposium which called for urgent reform of the reform of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC). The CCRC was established some 15 years ago in the wake of judicial scandals such as Birmingham Six and Guildford Four. "I thought it was a beacon of light which would ensure those wrongly convicted got justice," May told delegates.

When the CCRC was set up, May was in Durham prison where she spent seven years of a 12 year sentence She is thought to have been the first lifer to protest their innocence throughout a sentence to be released on her tariff date. May claims to have been told repeatedly by parole officers, psychologists and prison staff that unless she admitted her guilt, she would never leave. "Even though I may be free from the confines of jail I am not free," she said at the event. "I still feel locked up because my conviction still stands."

Despite the profile of a case like Susan May, the 67-year old finds herself without a lawyer and her freedom, as she sees it, is in the hands of a besieged CCRC referring her case back to the court of appeal for a third time. Legal aid ended when the CCRC last rejected her case.

Every year the CCRC receives in the region of 1,000 new applications mainly from prisoners claiming to be serving time for crimes they didn't commit. It rejects 96% of its cases. Every so often a case is referred back to the appeal judges such as Sam Hallam, jailed for life at the Old Bailey in 2005 for the murder of Essayas Kassahun, which goes back to the court of appeal on Wednesday.

May is not quite alone. She has a network of longtime supporters notably Dorothy Cooksey and her brother Geoff Goodwin, a former builder and lay preacher at the church down the road who she calls her Mr Forensics, and Guardian prison correspondent Eric Allison. "The reality is that without a lawyer, and without a good lawyer, Sue won't get her case back to the court of appeal," Allison tells me. "It's as simple as that."

The INUK symposium was one of a number of meetings about miscarriages of justice in recent weeks including a JusticeGap debate entitled Wrongly accused: Who is responsible for investigating miscarriages of justice? and a Criminal Appeal Lawyers Association (CALA) conference - Miscarriages of Justice: Who cares?

The subject might have gone out of fashion but (obviously) never went away. Three events took place within weeks suggests people do care; but the lack of interest by the mainstream media was a consistent theme. INUK and its founder Dr Michael Naughton argue the CCRC is held back by the requirement in the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 that only cases with the "real possibility" of the conviction being overturned can be referred to the court of appeal.

Professor Zander QC, a member of the Runciman royal commission on criminal justice whose report led to the creation of the CCRC was asked to consider whether the CCRC lived up to what was originally envisaged. He rejected the INUK proposal that the real possibility test is replaced by a test that allows the CCRC to refer convictions back to the court of appeal if it considered that the applicant is or might be innocent.

Zander argued that the royal commission would have probably taken the view that it would make no sense to suggest that the CCRC should refer conviction cases "where it did not think there was a real possibility that the conviction would be reconsidered". "It would have said, what would be the point?"

At the JusticeGap debate, Gareth Peirce, the solicitor who represented Judith Ward, the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four, clashed with Alastair MacGregor QC, the CCRC's deputy chair. What would be the point in the CCRC referring cases back to the appeal judges if there was no real possibility that those convictions would be quashed, MacGregor asked. Peirce described herself as "profoundly shocked". "It's as if you are budgeting the number of innocent people who can get their cases before the court... You are making decisions collectively as to a kind of quota system in which you try and think ahead of what the court of appeal might do.'

Meanwhile for those "many people left on the cutting room floor" by the CCRC, as the lawyer Mark Newby put it, the wait goes on.

Jon Robins edited Wrongly accused: Who is responsible for investigating miscarriages of justice? available free at thejusticegap.com