Breaking the silence in 2021.
No posts from me since August and as I try to pinpoint why the major reason seems to be have been working on a case of Mark Lundy which I think is a wrongful conviction. Right now it seems to be among the few cases I've worked on, as the one which has absorbed the most time and still counting. It's full of holes. They're everywhere.
At some point well over a year back I decided to drop the controversial science used and look at the case from the beginning, starting with motive, opportunity, crime scene evidence, autopsies, and the general inquiry before matching it to the novel "science." Everything looked into was not what it appeared to be, the flaws were immense particularly the motive that the Crown based its case on, and from there, things do not get any better. The main discovery I was looking for was what I would call the instrument or working of the miscarriage of Justice because they always have a framework of sorts that connects together into a broken conviction.
The disappointment has been that the Courts have learned little from earlier miscarriages of Justice, such as Bain, Thomas, and Pora. While the cases may not be the same the mechanisms of how the MOJ has worked are, even when applied differently. These are things the public expects to have been fixed, especially when after 20 years or so a falsely convicted person is freedom gained there are often comments about how the same could not be happening in current times, but they are.
Notable this week has the English case of Jeremy Bamber being returned to the CCRC on a number of grounds including that critical evidence was withheld. That case I was once told by Robin Bain supporters was like the Bain case. Indeed it is but not for the reasons the Robin Bain supporters believe but rather the forensics around a suicide that was ignored. Just as now, while Scott Watson waits for his appeal, the similarities in the forensic science failures in his case match the Lundy case. They are in fact worse because the autopsies in the Lundy case were completely flawed as well forensic evidence. Where an exaggerated past was held against Scott, in Lundy it was the fat bastard who cheated on his wife used to cause public anger.
But justice is not built on anger, it is also not built on misused science or hidden evidence - all things that are part of the patterns I wrote about. After the Thomas case, certain disastrous things were never going to happen again. But they have again and again. That is what needs to be resisted. I hope the CCRC will play a role in that, it will at least in Lundy - but the British system has shown in the Bamber case that the CCRC there has been wilfully blind on at least some occasions.
So at least 3 cases in NZ of probable convictions edge forward to remedy, while Jeremy Bamber half a world a way and imprisoned for 3 decades get the chance for the truth to be looked at for the first time.
