#Miscarriage of Justice

[maysshortmoviereviews]

Mr. Bates vs The Post Office (2024)

One of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history where hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters and postmistresses were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting due to a defective IT system.

This show is all based on a true story and it will make your blood boil and make you very angry at the injustice. This is still ongoing and you will not believe how long it has taken for the innocent postmasters and postmistresses to get this level of coverage. A must watch. If you are not in Britain, it will still be worth watching if you read up a little bit on the 'Horizon Post Office Scandal'. It really is just so wrong what has happened.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Democratic attorneys general call for federal probe of Greg Abbott pardon | Chron.

By Brooke Kushwaha

Texas Governor Greg Abbott's recent pardon of convicted killer Daniel Perry is now the target of 14 Democratic Attorneys General who are calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the pardon.

The letter penned by New York Attorney General Letitia James and signed by 13 other Democratic Attorneys General urged U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to open a civil rights investigation into Perry, who was convicted of murder and later pardoned after killing Garrett Foster at a Black Lives Matter protest in Austin.

Governor Abbott vowed to pardon Foster before he was even convicted last year, citing Texas’ “stand your ground” laws permitting certain instances of armed self-defense if an individual feels threatened. Both Perry and Foster had been armed in the altercation, but Perry fatally shot Foster. Within a year, the governor-appointed Texas parole board recommended Perry’s pardon and Governor Abbott acted swiftly to approve his release. Perry walked free within an hour of the announcement.

In the absence of state intervention, James called on the federal government to bring Perry to justice, characterizing Perry's actions as racially motivated acts of hate.

“The facts of the case were egregious,” James wrote, noting that a jury of 12 had voted to convict Perry of murder after the discovery that he had posted online advocating for vigilante murder of racial justice protestors.

James cited the Dept. of Justice’s history of taking on civil rights cases superseding local and state justice systems, and expressed concern that Texas' "stand your ground" laws as enforced by Abbott could encourage others to commit further acts of violence against protestors.

“At the time of his murder, Garrett Foster was exercising his First Amendment right to protest, as a part of broader protests against police brutality and racial injustice in the summer of 2020,” James wrote. “Texas law does not prevent a federal prosecution for Mr. Perry’s act of killing someone for racial reasons in order to prevent him from exercising constitutional rights.”

Governor Abbott's office did not respond to request for comment.

[recovering-redditor]

*bro voice* This is such fuckin bullshit, man!

I mention that I side with werewolves over vampires in a workplace argument, once, and I’m The Local Furry now and forevermore.

But my coworker, during a discussion of the show Inkmaster, describes his enthusiasm for a particularly sexy giraffe tattoo, and he’s completely fine? Ridiculous.

[scotianostra]

On November 8th 1752, Seumas a' Ghlinne / James of the Glen was hung at Cnap Chaolis Mhic Pharaig, near Ballachulish.

If you’ve read the books or watched the film(s), Kidnapped, you will roughly know the story of the Appin murder, the shooting in the back of government agent Colin Campbell of Glenure – the ‘Red Fox’ in Kidnapped. He was assassinated in a ruthless ambush by an unknown hand in the Wood of Lettermore near Ballachulish by the side of Loch Linnhe in Argyll. Two days later James Stewart from Glenduror known in gaelic as Seumas a Ghlinne was taken in custody as an accessory to murder. The murder was assumed to have been committed by his foster son Allan Breac Stewart.

It has been claimed that on the day he was shot Campbell was about to indulge in a spot of “ethnic cleansing” by evicting Stewart families from their houses on the Ardsheal estate and replacing them with Campbells. That claim has never been proved but post-Culloden, anti-Campbell sentiment was rife in the west Highlands. The Campbells, living in the heart of clan country, were however loyal to the Hanoverian monarchy and deeply unpopular among those who had fought with Charles Edward Stewart, the Bonnie Prince himself. They had also been seen to “do the bidding of their English masters” at the Massacre of Glencoe 60 years earlier.

James Stewart was taken for trial to the Campbell stronghold of Inveraray Castle. The trial was a travesty. Eleven of the 15 jurors were Campbells and the presiding judge was the Duke of Argyll, the clan chief. Not surprisingly Stewart was sentenced to die.

It is said that on the day of the hanging, the real man who fired the shot had to be held down at a house in Ballachulish to prevent him giving himself up.

In 2001, nearly 250 years after the incident, an 89-year-old descendant of the Stewarts of Appin, Anda Penman, claimed it was time to break the family silence. She said the murder was planned by four young Stewart lairds and that the gun was fired by the best shot among the four, Donald Stewart of Ballachulish, who had been elected assassin. Penman died soon afterwards and no member of the Stewart family has substantiated herstory.

For eighteen months the body of James of the Glen was left to hang on the gibbet at an elevated and highly visible spot on the south end of the Ballachulish Ferry. Battered by the winds and rain of the west Highlands, Stewart’s’ body rapidly disintegrated.

When only his skeleton remained it was held together by chains and wires. Guarded night and day, the grisly spectacle served as a stark warning to the restless Highland clans that this was the fate awaiting anyone who harboured murderous thoughts.

Back in 1754 the sight of the remains of James Stewart was too much for a local half-wit known as “Daft Macphee”. It is said he uprooted the gallows and threw it into Loch Linnhe and that it then floated into Loch Etive before coming to rest further south near Bonawe. The wooden gibbet was used as a bridge across a stream and the bones of James of the Glen were carefully gathered and buried - by none other than young Donald Stewart of Ballachulish.

The inscription on the Stewart Monument which is a granite block crowned by a quartzite boulder reads:

James Stewart

James of the Glens

Executed here November 1752

For a crime of which he was not guilty

[justicemiscarried]

SHERRY SHERRETT-ROBINSON.

Hey everyone!! Sorry for not posting much recently—school has really been kicking my ass. But I’m back today with a brand-new case of justice miscarried for you. The 1990s saw many great advances: the widespread usage of video games, the World Wide Web, mobile phones and cable television; highly individualistic and, thus, iconic youth culture; third-wave feminism; the curbing of HIV. But in Ontario, the forensic science and criminal justice systems were long overdue for a rude awakening…

:･ﾟ☆✧ SUMMARY

Sherry Sherrett-Robinson was arrested and charged with the murder of her four-month-old son, Joshua, on March 27, 1996. A little over three months earlier, Sherrett-Robinson had found her son dead in his playpen. Even though she initially disavowed any involvement in his death, the director of the Ontario Pediatric Forensic Pathology Unit at the time took the stand as the Crown’s star witness, saying that Sherrett-Robinson had smothered her son to death. Sherrett-Robinson later changed her plea, pleading guilty for infanticide. She was convicted on June 2, 1999. Straightforward, right? But maybe not… Before you read any further, ask yourself: What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly complicate such an open-and-shut case as this?

:･ﾟ☆✧ SO, WHAT WENT WRONG?

Particularly astute readers may have used the location & time of this case to correctly deduce that the “star witness” whose “medical opinion” formed the central pillar of the Crown’s case against Sherrett-Robinson was the now infamous Charles Smith. Now, if you are anything like me, the very name of Charles Smith probably causes you to recoil in disgust. That’s because the man was a FRAUD! The very fraudiest of frauds!

Although he was appointed the director of the Ontario Pediatric Forensic Pathology Unit in 1992 and was viewed as a foremost expert, Smith has no formal training in forensic pathology and no certification. Despite this, he continued to be consulted in even the most difficult criminally suspicious pediatric deaths. Below are the claims that Charles Smith made during Sherrett-Robinson’s case, followed by what actually happened:

He said there was swelling of the brain; but actually, formal review found no evidence of this.

He said there was hemorrhaging of the neck tissues; but actually, formal review found that these were caused by Smith himself during the autopsy.

He said that there was a skull fracture; but actually, the review found that this was a normal developing cranial suture.

If these things had been known, Sherrett-Robinson never would have been convicted, prosecuted, or even charged and arrested to begin with.

As a forensic biology student, I also have to note that since the time of this case several reviews have investigated topics of sudden infant deaths, infanticide, and smothering of children while they sleep, and my perusal of this literature only further cements my confidence that Charles Smith was totally out of his depth with the testimony he gave at Sherrett-Robinson’s trial. Even if all the facts upon which he’d based his testimony were true, none of them would have provided compelling evidence that Sherrett-Robinson smothered her child.

One paper found that there are no significant physical indications—like contusions, abrasions, or hemorrhaging—that could differentiate an intentional smothering from an unintentional smothering, so Smith had to go beyond what he could reasonably provide as a professional opinion if he claimed that injury interpretation lent him confidence that Sherrett-Robinson intentionally smothered her son.

Another paper showed that the number of sudden infant deaths that are actually homicides is significantly less than 10%, and that—while it is indisputable that some carers of children can intentionally harm their wards—overestimates of the true rates of homicide are based on uncontrolled, circumstantial, anecdotal, and indirect evidence. This also displays the importance of dispelling noble cause bias and adhering to the scientific method by seeking to disprove a null hypothesis, rather than by trying to prove an alternative hypothesis.

If I, a second-year student, can do a cursory search and find these things, Charles Smith surely could have surveyed the relevant literature at the time and come to the same conclusion. In fact, Charles Smith would have had a legal and ethical obligation to commit himself to continued professional development and revision of his methods. This is required for the level of competence that forensic scientists are expected to display. The trust of an expert is deferral to their authority, so an expert must both be competent and accurately represent their competence. Smith was both incompetent and inaccurately represented his competence.

Later, inquiries into Smith’s failings found that in cases such as and including Sherrett-Robinson’s, Charles Smith repeatedly refused to acknowledge the limits of his expertise or any controversy regarding his evidence, overstated his knowledge, criticized other professionals, reported his personal experience as evidence, and failed to adequately prepare for court, among other ethical issues. He also proclaimed that he had “a thing against people who hurt children,” thus falling short of the standard of neutrality required of him as an expert witness. Sherrett-Robinson, in his mind, was someone who could have hurt a child—and he was out to prove that she did.

Of course, the Court also failed Sherry Sherrett-Robinson by accepting Charles Smith’s evidence on no other basis than the fact that it was "GiVeN bY cHaRLeS sMiTh." As the trier of fact, a judge or juror has the obligation to critically examine why someone is considered an expert, what their field of expertise is, whether their findings can be expressed in a way both precise and easy to understand, and what the limitations of their investigation were. This qualification of the expert’s credentials should be repeated in every case, not just taken for granted because of the expert’s reputation precedes them. Instead, Smith's reputation for excellence allowed him to send numbers of innocent people to jail due to a general lack of oversight and accountability.

Smith’s involvement and the Court’s allowance of his involvement in this case weren’t the only ethical issues, though—let’s talk about the plea deal a little. That’s right—again, attentive readers may note that although Sherrett-Robinson was charged with murder, she pled guilty for—and was convicted of—infanticide. What’s the difference? Well, according to the Criminal Code of Canada, infanticide is when a woman causes the death of her newborn child by willful action or willful omission as a result of the effect of or lack of recovery from childbirth or lactation—and it is a much lesser offence than murder. So, before her trial began, the Crown prosecutor offered Sherrett-Robinson a deal: if she agreed to not argue against the Crown’s allegation that she had not smothered Joshua, the Crown would withdraw the murder charge against her and proceed with a charge of infanticide instead. Now, if she were found guilty of infanticide, Sherrett-Robinson’s sentence would be much lighter than if she were found guilty of murder. Intimidated by Charles Smith’s luminosity and by the weight of the crime she had been charged with—and with the advice of her lawyer, who convinced her that the likelihood of persuading the court to believe her word over Smith’s was low—Sherrett-Robinson accepted the deal. She was imprisoned for a year.

The overarching ethical issue in Sherry Sherrett-Robinson’s case can be boiled down into two words: “confirmation” and “bias,” in that order. Confirmation bias is one of the most deadly weapons against forensic science and against science in general. That's why, on a personal level, scientists strive to analyze cases from an objective perspective instead of immediately accepting the answer that seems easiest or aligns most with the answer we want. It's not hard to see that Charles Smith failed Sherry Sherrett-Robinson. But the deadliness of confirmation bias is also why, on a systemic level, protocols are supposed to be in place to mitigate confirmation bias and prevent the corruption of evidence. By failing to have such protocols in place, the law, science, and the criminal justice system all failed Sherry Sherrett-Robinson.

:･ﾟ☆✧ RESOLUTION

Six years after her conviction, Sherrett-Robinson learned about the Goudge Inquiry, or the Inquiry into pediatric forensic pathology in Ontario, which systematically reviewed and assessed the way pediatric forensic pathology was practiced and overseen in Ontario between 1981 and 2001, especially under Charles Smith. She submitted an application for her case to be formally reviewed, and the subsequent review found that the likely cause of Joshua’s death was accidental asphyxiation, not being smothered to death.

The Court also found that the Court itself failed Sherrett-Robinson by not detecting the faults in Charles Smith’s testimony and methods. Sherrett-Robinson was exonerated by the Ontario Court of Appeal on December 7, 2009, with the Court concluding that she suffered a “profoundly regrettable” miscarriage of justice “due to flaws in pathological evidence”. Smith was stripped of his medical license in 2011.

The Goudge Inquiry was a turning point for the practice of forensic pathology, and especially pediatric forensic pathology, in Ontario. It made 148 recommendations, which can be grouped into roughly 5 groups:

Recommendations 1-11 deal with professionalizing and rebuilding Pediatric Forensic Pathology in Ontario through providing education, training, and certification for pathologists, providing adequate funding for forensic pathologists, and dealing with the shortage of forensic pathologists, among other recommendations.

Recommendations 12-60 deal with the effective organization & oversight of Forensic Pathology in Ontario by creating policies regarding the filing of concerns by hospital pathologists, establishing protocols for criminally suspicious pediatric deaths, and establishing a registry of trained forensic pathologists, among other recommendations.

Recommendations 61-67 deal with transparency and improving the public complaints process.

Recommendations 84-100 deal with effective communication between forensic scientists and the criminal justice system by ensuring that any technical knowledge is understood by laypersons, the scopes & limits of evidence and areas of controversy are clearly communicated, etc.

Recommendations 141-148 deal with pediatric forensic pathology and potential wrongful convictions, affirming that any pathology opinion that can be said to be unreasonable in light of current understanding should be reviewed.

The effects that the Inquiry into Pediatric Forensic Pathology have had on the practice of forensic pathology in Ontario have been examined, and it’s been found that the Inquiry resulted in drastic improvements to the practice of forensic pathology. This bodes an optimistic future for forensic science at a time when some may be discouraged into completely giving up hope in its reliability. Forensic pathology, and forensic science as a whole, has massive potential as a reliable and necessary field if—and only if—it scrupulously adheres to the principles of the scientific method. Forensic scientists must hold themselves to a high standard of professional behaviour to uphold the integrity of the field, and it's important to meticulously study the mistakes of other scientists and identify exactly where they went wrong to prevent ourselves from repeating those mistakes in the future (hey, that's exactly what this blog is all about!).

[nickngreg]

*chinhands*

[fallofcorruptbritain]

FFS... what's wrong with this country?

This good man has spent most of his life here, worked hard, paid his taxes, raised a good family and done his bit for the community and fellow citizens.

More so than the Tory tax dodgers and Russian cronies who have bought their way into Britain with party donations, and have then been given seats in the House of Lords, ffs.

Has nobody in the Government or the Civil Service got any common sense, decency or compassion?

[100gayicons]

Homer Baker (19) and Thomas Keene (24) were shipmates on the U.S.S. New Jersey. Shortly after it arrived in San Francisco, California, the duo were detained and arrested by military police. The charge? Sodomy.

The US Military Code didn’t prohibit sodomy until 1917 but California had laws in place for “crimes against nature”. Baker and Keene were turned over to the civilian police and put on trial. Baker, the younger of the two, was given a 6 year sentence. Keene was given a 10 year sentence. They both were sent to San Quentin State Prison, San Quentin, California, June 5, 1908.

Baker served four of his six year sentence, while Keene served six and a half of his ten years.

No information available as to the future fates of the two sailors after being released. I hope the two avoid WWI just a few years after their release.

In 1975 California passed a consenting adult law (effective January 1976) repealing the sodomy law, thus making gay sex legal for the first time.

In 2003, the Supreme Court found that anti-sodomy laws violated basic constitutional protections

Something to remember: As of September 17th 2020, the following states criminalize sodomy:

Alabama

Florida

Idaho

Kansas

Louisiana

Michigan

Mississippi

Missouri

North Carolina

Oklahoma

South Carolina

Texas

Utah

Virginia

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1991 – The convictions of the group of people known as the ‘Maguire Seven’ were quashed by the Court of Appeal in London.

The Court of Appeal overturns the sentences on the Maguire Seven. In 2005, Prime Minister Tony Blair apologised unreservedly for what happened. “I am very sorry that they were subject to such an ordeal and such an injustice. “They deserve to be completely and publicly exonerated.” Forced (beaten) confessions, contaminated forensic kits, a rush to justice and sloppy police practices ensured that…

[towlerknows]

Excellent, if rather harrowing, article.

Highly recommended.

[justmebeingdifferent33]

Lucy Letby - A serious case of injustice, scapegoating and toxic work culture?

I’m going to say it how it is, I am no expert in the trial, but I believe Lucy Letby is innocent. How her prosecution has come to be is completely beyond me. As always, I am here questioning our ability as a society to see things for how they really are. Here in internet land everyone’s a so-called expert on what they’ve only looked at from the perspective that they’re told to. Not only do I…

[boredmezzosoprano]

Look at that self satisfied little smirk on the b*tch's face!! Does that look like someone forced into doing horrifically depraved things and is eaten up with guilt over it?! That right there is a sexual sadist and murderer who knows she’s getting away with it all! Karla Homolka should still be in prison (and I mean an actual prison as opposed to mental health retreat that for some reason is counted as a prison?)🤦🏼‍♀️

[scotianostra]

On May 25th 1909 Oscar Slater was found guilty of murdering Marion Gilchrist in Glasgow.

In December 1908 83-year-old spinster Marion Gilchrist was beaten to death in a robbery in West Princes Street. The robber was disturbed when her maid returned and fled with just a brooch, although there was jewellery worth £3000 - £280,000 today – hidden in her wardrobe.

Slater left for New York five days later but earlier had allegedly tried to sell a pawn ticket for a brooch. Because of this – or because he was the most convenient suspect – police applied for Slater’s extradition. And although Slater was told that this application would almost certainly fail, he voluntarily returned to Glasgow.

At his trial, defence witnesses provided Slater with an alibi and confirmed that he had announced his visit to America long before the murder. Despite this he was convicted by a majority of nine to six (five not proven and one not guilty) and in May 1909 was sentenced to death. Scottish juries have fifteen, rather than the 12 in lots of other countries.

However, his lawyers organised a petition, signed by 20,000 people, and the Scottish secretary was forced by public opinion to issue a conditional pardon, commuting the sentence to life imprisonment.

He served 19 years in Peterhead prison.

Most who have looked at the case believe in Slater’s innocence, including a subject of a recent post, Arthur Conan Doyle who, in 1912, published The Case of Oscar Slater and argued for a full pardon. To no avail.

In 1927 a book by William Park led the Solicitor General, a year later, to quash the conviction on the ground that the judge had not directed the jury about the irrelevance of Slater’s previous character.

Oscar received £6,000 (£300,000+ today) in compensation. He died in 1948.

Although not cleared of the murder many eminent people through the years have put weight behind the theory that this was a miscarriage of justice. There is a more detailed account of the case here http://www.bbc.co.uk/.../the_curious_case_of_oscar_slater...

[justicemiscarried]

GUY PAUL MORIN.

Christine Jessop went missing on October 3, 1984. It was treated as a missing person investigation by the York Region Police Service—nothing in or surrounding the home was treated as a crime scene. This proved to be a crucial mistake.

More than two months later, on December 31, 1984, Christine's body was found, badly decomposed. Her death could have occurred months before discovery.

Because her body was found in Durham Region, the missing persons investigation became a homicide investigation at the same time that it was taken charge of by the Durham Police Service. YRPS did not pass all of their information on to the Durham Police.

Numerous officers assisted in the search and collection of evidence. A major snowstorm was forecast for that evening (December 31), and officers felt pressured to process the scene quickly, which may have been the reason why there were so many major mistakes in evidence-handling and record-keeping. Notably, a cigarette butt was found on the site and logged, but later went missing.

On February 22, 1985, two officers interviewed the Jessops’ next-door neighbour, Guy Paul Morin and secretively tape-recorded him. There was a plethora of issues with this secretive interview, even apart from the deception. First of all, the 90-minute interview ran on only one side for 45 minutes; the officers claimed that they didn’t know they had to turn the tape over. During the 45 minutes that they conveniently didn’t record, they reported that Morin said some “suspicious comments”, such as that “little girls...aren’t innocent when they grow up”. What turned out to be most damning for Morin, however, was the fact that he played the clarinet instead of hockey: two officers' impression of him was that he was "weird". Unbeknownst to Morin, everything he said—no matter how reasonable or innocuous—was slowly transforming him into Public Enemy No. 1 . That day, and that interview, changed his life forever.

Morin had punched out of work at approximately 3:32 pm on the day Christine went missing. Even if he'd run home from work and didn’t stop along the way, he would have arrived home no earlier than 4:14 pm, and Christine’s mom & brother testified that Christine was already gone when they’d arrived home at 4:10 pm. Instead of letting that deter them—or, y'know, widening their net for suspects—the police pressured Christine's mom and brother into changing their testimony. They ended up saying that they didn’t get home until after 5.

Investigators needed to provide proof that there was physical contact between Morin and Christine, so they specifically sought evidence that she had been inside his vehicle. A biologist from the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto (CFS) conducted a quick, preliminary microscopic comparison of a strand of hair found in Christine’s necklace to one of Morin’s hairs while the police stood over her shoulder. She communicated a preliminary opinion to the officers, saying that it looked like it could be a match. This was one of the main reasons that led to his arrest. If the information she reported had been accurate, Morin may never have been arrested.

:･ﾟ☆✧ Forensic evidence provided by the prosecution:

Hairs and fibers collected from inside Morin’s vehicle as well as from the body site.

The necklace hair was said to be not from Christine and was presumed to be from her killer; it was microscopically similar to Morin’s hair.

Three hairs in Morin’s car were dissimilar to Morin’s hair and were similar to Christine’s hair.

A forensic technologist and forensic scientist from CFS reported and testified that the fibres were similar to Morin’s and could have come from the same source as several fibres found on the body.

:･ﾟ☆✧ Defense’s questions:

Laundromat contamination: Jessop’s family and Morin used the same local laundromat.

This possibility was dismissed under oath in Morin's first trial—but, ironically, CFS began refusing to accept samples from penitentiaries due to the use of communal laundry equipment not long after that.

A published scientific study was provided by CFS scientists, but it was misused by the prosecution. Some forensic scientists also did a personal investigation, where they threw some clothes covered with fibres into the laundromat washing machine, and then threw out clothes without any fibres immediately after. The clothes from the second load were covered with fibres from the first load—but they didn’t disclose this to the defence.

The cigarette butt found at the scene should have excluded Morin, as he was not a smoker, but Constable Cameron later testified in court that the cigarette was his and that he stamped it out when they were told to not smoke near the site—this was not true, as he stamped out his cigarette far from where the body was located. The real cigarette was never located.

:･ﾟ☆✧ The prosecution's usage of jailhouse informants:

Robert Dean May was diagnosed as a pathological liar and deficient social conscience. Mr. X had a diagnosed personality disorder with sociopathic tendencies and a history of lying to police and correctional authorities. Mr. X even explicitly told police he would give them anything to get him into a halfway house. But no existing law or ethical standards prevented the prosecutors from calling these informants forward as witnesses to testify that Morin had committed his crimes to them.

Miraculously, Morin was actually acquitted of first degree murder during his first trial. The next year, however, the Court of Appeal ordered a new trial.

More discoveries made between the end of the first trial and the start of the second trial:

Christine’s family ended up discovering bone fragments at Christine’s body site that were handed over to police, but never reported to the defence.

The Crown attorney found that the lead detective on the case had made two copies of his notebook, and the two copies had divergent entries for the same events In addition, other pieces of evidence found at the body site that should have been submitted to the CFS were found in his house.

Comparison samples from Christine’s class at school were not submitted to the CFS for testing. When they were tested, two samples were a “match” with, and three other samples had “smiliar characteristics to”, the necklace hair.

CFS lost over 200 slides of hair and fibres connected to the case.

Jessop’s body was exhumed to compare with the bone fragments the family found at the site. Dr. Jerry Melbye, one of the founders of the FSC program at the University of Toronto, assisted the defence council in examining the exhumed remains and found that half of Jessop’s breastbone had been sheared off in a straight line (suggesting a large weapon had been used) and was missing. Dr. Melbye testified that dirt was not even cleaned from the bones, meaning there was obvious information missed at the first autopsy: extensive wounds, and massive skull fracture. This also implied massive blood loss, and a longer time frame for the committal of crime.

Despite all this, however, somehow, Morin was found guilty at his second trial.

In 1994, the Crown and defence cooperated to examine a semen stain found on Christine's clothing. A team of three DNA experts was called in to assist: one for the defence, one for the Crown, and one independent agreed upon by both parties. As a result of this testing, in 1995, Guy Morin was finally excluded as the murderer of Christine Jessop.

The Kaufman Inquiry looked into the conduct of the investigation into the death of Christine Jessop, the conduct of the CFS, and the criminal proceedings involving the charge that Morin murdered Jessop. 119 recommendations were made, the most important of which I outline below:.

Recommendation 6: Forensic opinions should only be acted upon when in writing (i.e. the police officers should not have been able to arrest Morin based on the preliminary verbal opinion given by the forensic biologist),

Recommendation 9: Specific language should be avoided by forensic scientists.

The terms “match” and “consistent with” used in the context of, e.g., forensic hair and fibre comparisons are examples of potentially misleading language. Forensic scientists should be instructed to avoid this.

Recommendation 11: The scientific method means that scientists should work to vigorously challenge or disprove a hypothesis, rather than to prove one. Forensic scientists should be instructed to adopt this approach (i.e. instead of working to prove that Morin did commit the crime, they should have worked at it from the angle that he didn’t commit the crime).

Recommendation 13: Policy should respect documentation of contacts with third parties.

Analysts and technicians should record the substance of their contacts with police, prosecutors, defense counsel, and non-CFS experts.

Upon the completion of this commission, Commissioner Kaufman had a profound quote about the whole ordeal that I muse upon often: “An innocent person was convicted of a heinous crime he did not commit," he said, talking about Morin. "Science helped convict him. Science helped exonerate him.”

[nickngreg]

[beta-lactam-allergic]

From CNN: Mother wrongly jailed for 20 years over the death of her four children has convictions quashed

Mother wrongly jailed for 20 years over the death of her four children has convictions quashed

About time this finally happened. As an Australian I can say this whole saga had been disgraceful on the part of our legal system. 20 years this woman spent in prison. She was only released a few months back.

They could've released her in the 2019 review after most of our nation's researchers in genetics & biomedical fields signed statements telling the courts that Folbigg's children almost certainly died due to genetic defects. But nope, the legal profession dragged this out for 4 more years rather than admit to being wrong.