Wednesday November 23, 2011: The Supreme Court(UK) backed judges in the High Court(Scotland)who had previously refused Mitchell the right to appeal again.
Maggie Scott QC said the Crown had relied on evidence of Mitchell’s comments and demeanor during the lawyer-less police interview, resulting in “a fundamental unfairness amounting to a denial of justice”.
Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that evidence taken from a police interview where a suspect was not first offered access to a solicitor was unreliable and could not be used in court.
However, in the instant ruling it respected the “finality” of the rejection of Mitchell’s appeal against conviction in May 2008 and did not believe there were any live matters that would lead the court to re-open his case.
At appeal in 2008, the justices criticized the “overbearing and hostile interrogation” by police of the teenager during the investigation in an attempt to gain a confession. However, the justices noted Mitchell had not been cowed nor submitted to the pressure.
The Supreme Court said that verdict marked the end of the case.
UPDATE:
The Scottish Criminal Review Commission rendered its uniquely absurd conclusion quite some time ago which left Luke Mitchell virtually without any further hope of release. However the commission has now ordered that murder victim Jodi Jones clothing be re-examined forensically since the scientific state of the art has changed in the interim and usable profiles might yet be obtained.
Four men were believed to have left their DNA on, in or inconveniently close to the corpse, but none of the four were ever arrested or considered suspects. One of the men when questioned, though not as a suspect, was provided by the police with a reason his dna might have been on the victim's tee shirt. The victim's sister later married one of the men whose dna was found at the crime scene.
A few days after the announcement of further dna testing, Corrine Mitchell's Caravan Park was fire bombed by "persons unknown".
Showing posts with label Police frame-up. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Police frame-up. Show all posts
Monday, December 29, 2014
Friday, November 15, 2013
Yep. Its started. And it will persist!!
Even though Ryan Ferguson is finally a free man its still a litany of guilt. "We won't re-try him" rather than "He is obviously innocent". And now the former police chief going on record as approving of prosecutor Kane and believing that Erickson and Ferguson were properly arrested, properly interrogated and are the actual perpetrators.
Cops just can't give up or admit they were wrong. They want to win at any cost.
Cops just can't give up or admit they were wrong. They want to win at any cost.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Police fixation as outright frame-up. Trial at last!!
Since the trial is currently underway, I wanted to re-post this blog item that was originally posted in relation to an analysis of the JonBenet Ramsey murder investigation.
Police fixation on initially adopted viewpoints.
A retired Detective Superintendent of the Fife Constabulary has been indicted for Perverting the Course of Justice, a rather serious charge in the UK, for actions that resulted in two defendants each spending ten years in prison.
Quite obviously a murder of an alcoholic in Scotland has no factual relationship to the Jonbenet Ramsey murder in Colorado, but I took particular note of it solely because the officers involved, although guilty of multiple wrongdoings, embarked on their course of illegal suppression of exculpatory evidence solely because it was contrary to the then-accepted theory of the case which had been prematurely adopted by the police.
This is yet another example of how people become fixated on an early interpretation of the evidence and will go to great lengths to make certain that all later developments are in accord with the prior view. It is quite obvious that the first few witnesses to give evidence that was contrary to the accepted viewpoint may have been given short shrift for a variety of reasons but once the number of contrary witnesses mushroomed the police clung to their prematurely adopted viewpoint despite the utter reliability of the contrary witnesses and the clearly verifiable circumstances of their observations. Police computer records were knowingly altered so that all statements indicating the contrary point of view were suppressed. Witnesses were apparently threatened by a police official who later was appointed to a position wherein he was inspecting other police forces.
This incident might be of some interest to those who feel that it is improper for innocent persons to promptly “lawyer-up” or that meeting with senior officials will clear up early misunderstandings created by initial investigators.
Note: Although the significant point is the fixation on an early-adopted viewpoint, those who care to follow some of the underlying facts of the case should be aware of certain unique terminology. Bent is a term that is often used in the UK to refer to a homosexual but in relation to a police officer the term bent refers to one that is corrupt and the word then carries no connotation of sexual orientation. The word tip in the UK can indeed refer to information provided by a member of the public to the police in order to aid the solution of a crime but it can also refer to what in the United States would be called a garbage dump. The word grass refers to an act that in the United States would be perhaps termed snitching or informing. The term Procurator Fiscal in Scottish law is the rough equivalent to coroner in the United States, meaning an official who makes a preliminary inquiry into the circumstances of a death and who issues a formal report of allegations relating to deaths, violent crimes or police corruption.
Excerpted from the Daily Record:
Scots cop accused of corruption
Mar 24 2008 Exclusive by Mark Mcgivern.
A BENT detective who fled Britain when he was accused of corruption is facing a new police probe after being tracked to Devon. Police want to quiz former chief superintendent Richard Munro over claims he framed two innocent men for murder. Munro who served 26 years in Fife Constabulary, left the force in disgrace in 2004.
The corruption investigation was launched after the appeal judges branded Munro a liar and said he and his colleagues were guilty of grave misconduct. Munro quit Britain and lived in various countries in a camper van and finally slipped back into the UK to a bolthole in Devon. Before Munro left the force, he was on secondment to HM Inspectorate of Constabulary – which inspects police forces and advises ministers.
Police fixation on initially adopted viewpoints.
A retired Detective Superintendent of the Fife Constabulary has been indicted for Perverting the Course of Justice, a rather serious charge in the UK, for actions that resulted in two defendants each spending ten years in prison.
Quite obviously a murder of an alcoholic in Scotland has no factual relationship to the Jonbenet Ramsey murder in Colorado, but I took particular note of it solely because the officers involved, although guilty of multiple wrongdoings, embarked on their course of illegal suppression of exculpatory evidence solely because it was contrary to the then-accepted theory of the case which had been prematurely adopted by the police.
This is yet another example of how people become fixated on an early interpretation of the evidence and will go to great lengths to make certain that all later developments are in accord with the prior view. It is quite obvious that the first few witnesses to give evidence that was contrary to the accepted viewpoint may have been given short shrift for a variety of reasons but once the number of contrary witnesses mushroomed the police clung to their prematurely adopted viewpoint despite the utter reliability of the contrary witnesses and the clearly verifiable circumstances of their observations. Police computer records were knowingly altered so that all statements indicating the contrary point of view were suppressed. Witnesses were apparently threatened by a police official who later was appointed to a position wherein he was inspecting other police forces.
This incident might be of some interest to those who feel that it is improper for innocent persons to promptly “lawyer-up” or that meeting with senior officials will clear up early misunderstandings created by initial investigators.
Note: Although the significant point is the fixation on an early-adopted viewpoint, those who care to follow some of the underlying facts of the case should be aware of certain unique terminology. Bent is a term that is often used in the UK to refer to a homosexual but in relation to a police officer the term bent refers to one that is corrupt and the word then carries no connotation of sexual orientation. The word tip in the UK can indeed refer to information provided by a member of the public to the police in order to aid the solution of a crime but it can also refer to what in the United States would be called a garbage dump. The word grass refers to an act that in the United States would be perhaps termed snitching or informing. The term Procurator Fiscal in Scottish law is the rough equivalent to coroner in the United States, meaning an official who makes a preliminary inquiry into the circumstances of a death and who issues a formal report of allegations relating to deaths, violent crimes or police corruption.
Excerpted from the Daily Record:
Scots cop accused of corruption
Mar 24 2008 Exclusive by Mark Mcgivern.
A BENT detective who fled Britain when he was accused of corruption is facing a new police probe after being tracked to Devon. Police want to quiz former chief superintendent Richard Munro over claims he framed two innocent men for murder. Munro who served 26 years in Fife Constabulary, left the force in disgrace in 2004.
The corruption investigation was launched after the appeal judges branded Munro a liar and said he and his colleagues were guilty of grave misconduct. Munro quit Britain and lived in various countries in a camper van and finally slipped back into the UK to a bolthole in Devon. Before Munro left the force, he was on secondment to HM Inspectorate of Constabulary – which inspects police forces and advises ministers.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Shirley McKie receives apology ...Public receives pablum!
Shirley McKie received a brief, pro-forma apology as the Forensic Services and Strathclyde police bask in whitewash. The official party line is now that fingerprint comparisons are merely the opinions of scientists and scientists are prone to disputes and conflicting opinions innocent of any underlying improper motivations.
The truth is simple.
Detective Constable Shirley McKie never entered the premises she had been guarding and therefore knew she could not have left her fingerprint on the jamb of the bedroom doorway. Her arrest and prosecution was almost certainly police retaliation for her having informed the defense lawyer of probable evidence contamination in a case that was embarrassing to the Strathclyde police. This was undoubtedly viewed by the police as a treasonous act of betrayal.
As to the two prints, it is now and always has been perfectly clear to anyone with the slightest training and experience in fingerprint examination that the impression made on Shirley McKie's official index card and the impression taken from the door jamb at the crime scene could not possibly have been made by the same finger. There is no valid basis for making any contrary claim and any expert who makes such a contrary claim does indeed do so on a basis other than a regard for the truthful reporting of his interpretations.
A photograph of Mike Tyson, a black male boxer, and a photograph of Paris Hilton, a white female media twit, bear several points of similarity but no matter how many such points of similarity are considered or what weight they are given no one would ever say that there is a forensic "match". And any Scottish inquiry that soft-pedals their questioning on such a matter does the Scottish public no good.
Shirley McKie was dragged thru the courts and railroaded into the poorhouse and the nuthouse by the Strathclyde Constabulary. She never entered the premises, she never had sex on the premises, she never lied about the case at all.
There is no question that the Shirley McKie case was a political one right from the start. As four Scottish experts testified that Shirley McKie had left the crime scene print there were five Scottish experts who were prevented from testifying that the crime scene print was not made by Shirley McKie and that any expert opinions to the contrary were clearly unsupportable. When the issue became an international one that extended to the entire fingerprint examination field, hordes of experts proclaimed that the crime scene print was definitely not from Shirley McKie. Many experts were also willing to add that anyone expressing an opinion that the crime scene print was that of Shirley McKie were not competent examiners.
Ian McKie: "We now have 13 experts proved to have made two misidentifications in the one case because of human error and frailty which they were able to sustain for nearly 14 years and in some cases still sustain. Throughout these years they were given countless opportunities to right the wrongs and accept their mistakes. Because of human error and despite having the most up to date identification tools available they were unable to do this and we must conclude innocently persisted with their provably flawed conclusions.
That not all these experts came from the same jurisdiction where it could be argued that the same culture, procedures and supervisory structures were in place only goes to reinforce the seriousness of the challenge fingerprinting faces from this report. We must assume that some of these conclusions were independently reached and did not result from some conspiracy, collective cultural arrogance or flawed organisational procedures. These were ordinary experts, many with a proven track record of excellence, who were able to get it wrong and persist in their erroneous conclusions."
The truth is simple.
Detective Constable Shirley McKie never entered the premises she had been guarding and therefore knew she could not have left her fingerprint on the jamb of the bedroom doorway. Her arrest and prosecution was almost certainly police retaliation for her having informed the defense lawyer of probable evidence contamination in a case that was embarrassing to the Strathclyde police. This was undoubtedly viewed by the police as a treasonous act of betrayal.
As to the two prints, it is now and always has been perfectly clear to anyone with the slightest training and experience in fingerprint examination that the impression made on Shirley McKie's official index card and the impression taken from the door jamb at the crime scene could not possibly have been made by the same finger. There is no valid basis for making any contrary claim and any expert who makes such a contrary claim does indeed do so on a basis other than a regard for the truthful reporting of his interpretations.
A photograph of Mike Tyson, a black male boxer, and a photograph of Paris Hilton, a white female media twit, bear several points of similarity but no matter how many such points of similarity are considered or what weight they are given no one would ever say that there is a forensic "match". And any Scottish inquiry that soft-pedals their questioning on such a matter does the Scottish public no good.
Shirley McKie was dragged thru the courts and railroaded into the poorhouse and the nuthouse by the Strathclyde Constabulary. She never entered the premises, she never had sex on the premises, she never lied about the case at all.
There is no question that the Shirley McKie case was a political one right from the start. As four Scottish experts testified that Shirley McKie had left the crime scene print there were five Scottish experts who were prevented from testifying that the crime scene print was not made by Shirley McKie and that any expert opinions to the contrary were clearly unsupportable. When the issue became an international one that extended to the entire fingerprint examination field, hordes of experts proclaimed that the crime scene print was definitely not from Shirley McKie. Many experts were also willing to add that anyone expressing an opinion that the crime scene print was that of Shirley McKie were not competent examiners.
Ian McKie: "We now have 13 experts proved to have made two misidentifications in the one case because of human error and frailty which they were able to sustain for nearly 14 years and in some cases still sustain. Throughout these years they were given countless opportunities to right the wrongs and accept their mistakes. Because of human error and despite having the most up to date identification tools available they were unable to do this and we must conclude innocently persisted with their provably flawed conclusions.
That not all these experts came from the same jurisdiction where it could be argued that the same culture, procedures and supervisory structures were in place only goes to reinforce the seriousness of the challenge fingerprinting faces from this report. We must assume that some of these conclusions were independently reached and did not result from some conspiracy, collective cultural arrogance or flawed organisational procedures. These were ordinary experts, many with a proven track record of excellence, who were able to get it wrong and persist in their erroneous conclusions."
Monday, August 1, 2011
Dateline August 5th 2011 Ryan Ferguson case.
A two-hour Dateline special on Friday August 5, 2011, entitled The Mystery of Halloween Night will cover the Ryan Ferguson case wherein an 18 year old slightly built youth was convicted of murdering a 300 pound athletic sports editor during a lengthy fight based on the dreams of an alcoholic drug addicted schizophrenic.
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