Lindy Chamberlain exonerated - a dingo did it.

[Chris_Halkides]

possible prejudice

I might add The Chamberlains were New Zealanders.
Lindy is only a nick name as she was born Alice Lynne Murchison of Whakatane.
Michael was from Christchurch and went to BOYS HIGH SCHOOL.

Robert2,

Do you think that there was prejudice against the Chamberlains because of that fact?

 

[Robert2]

Yes it appear New Zealand is not thought well of in Australia. They were of the SDA religion too which caused problems

 

[Sideroxylon]

Yes it appear New Zealand is not thought well of in Australia. They were of the SDA religion too which caused problems

Your first is a mischaracterization of the relationship between Australians and New Zealanders. There is a friendly rivalry and the jabs, while some may appear hard, are good natured. I am a New Zealand born Australian and I would be surprised if any of the board's Antipodean members saw it differently.

The Chamberlains' religion was discussed as part of a murder motive and was mixed in with speculations about the baby's name.

 

[Damien Evans]

Your first is a mischaracterization of the relationship between Australians and New Zealanders. There is a friendly rivalry and the jabs, while some may appear hard, are good natured. I am a New Zealand born Australian and I would be surprised if any of the board's Antipodean members saw it differently.

The Chamberlains' religion was discussed as part of a murder motive and was mixed in with speculations about the baby's name.

HAHAHA SCUM!



Er, you were saying?

 

[Sideroxylon]

HAHAHA SCUM!



Er, you were saying?

Bloody convict.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

presumptive testing of blood in some cases

A recent blog entry discusses the Chamberlain case in the context of other cases involving presumptive blood tests. Whenever I am in New Zealand, I tell them that Australia should annex you folks, and whenever I am in Australia, I tell them that New Zealand should annex you folks.

 

[Sideroxylon]

From the Northern Territory News:

Dingo drags teen girl
A DINGO has tried to drag a 13-year-old girl in her sleeping bag in a bold attack at a Territory camping ground.

Rebecca Robinson woke to find a dingo dragging her from her parents' campsite at Aurora Kakadu Lodge in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Rebecca was sleeping on a mattress under the awning of the caravan when she woke up to the sensation of being dragged.

http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2012/07/17/310971_ntnews.html

The exaggerated headline is later corrected in the body of the story - Of course a dingo is not capable of dragging the average 13-year-old. The obvious link to the Azaria case is made.

 

[catsmate]

Bump.
Michael Chamberlain;s book on the case, Heart of Stone - Justice for Azaria, is out. Worth reading for the detail and perspective.

 

[Alt+F4]

I hope this book gives him some closure but is that even possible after the death, a very violent death of your own child?

A friend of mine has already read this book, she thought Michael Chamberlain is still very angry (justifiably so) and the only thing she did not like about it was that there were a lot of typos.

 

[Robert2]

Many court cases get off on the wrong foot.
There will be a number of people in prison that never did it. The police can kill people and it is just in the line of duty. All people should be held accountable for their action by the court system not an internal police enquirery. Even judges that get it wrong the public pay for highly paid people to make open errors based on who tells the best story in court.

 

[Magenta]

Did anyone else see Australian Story on Monday? It featured Michael Brown, veteran reporter at the SMH (now gone in the Fairfax purge). Brown covered the Chamberlain story for 30 years and was in the court room when the jury returned with their verdict. When the guilty verdict was announced he called out "You pack of bastards!"

MALCOLM BROWN: The judge did everything possible to get the jury to acquit, bar actually directing them to do so. I thought that the jury would see the point. Instead of that, they came out with this guilty verdict.

Link

 

[Beerina]

Did anyone else see Australian Story on Monday? It featured Michael Brown, veteran reporter at the SMH (now gone in the Fairfax purge). Brown covered the Chamberlain story for 30 years and was in the court room when the jury returned with their verdict. When the guilty verdict was announced he called out "You pack of bastards!"

MALCOLM BROWN: The judge did everything possible to get the jury to acquit, bar actually directing them to do so. I thought that the jury would see the point. Instead of that, they came out with this guilty verdict.

Link

The purpose of a jury is to let the people, as opposed to a judge AKA government, put someone in jail. It is a terrible (big-n-scary) power.

There's no great philosophical argument against government declining to prosecute. The judge should have just cancelled the trial.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

two people versus the whole state

Did anyone else see Australian Story on Monday? It featured Michael Brown, veteran reporter at the SMH (now gone in the Fairfax purge). Brown covered the Chamberlain story for 30 years and was in the court room when the jury returned with their verdict. When the guilty verdict was announced he called out "You pack of bastards!"

"MALCOLM BROWN: I published an article querying how two tiny little people could expect to confront the forces of a state, that is the Territory, which had gone to the trouble of getting experts from the other side of the world and invested any unlimited amounts of money to getting a prosecution together. How could they stand up to that?"

 

[catsmate]

"MALCOLM BROWN: I published an article querying how two tiny little people could expect to confront the forces of a state, that is the Territory, which had gone to the trouble of getting experts from the other side of the world and invested any unlimited amounts of money to getting a prosecution together. How could they stand up to that?"

I remember that quote from Chamberlain's book.

 

[Malkmus]

There was supposed blood spray that was common to the make of car that the Chamberlain's drove, and it was a sticky fluid that was actually sound deadener, IIRC. Does anyone know whether this putative blood was detected with ortho-tolidine, which is a presumptive test for blood, or with the (impure) antibodies to hemoglobin F? (On the other Chamberlain thread, I have some citations about the antibody issue.) Thanks; I have never been able to get to the bottom of this part of the story.

According to this:

The car was later tested for the presence of blood with ortho-tolidine. Some positive results found were subsequently attributed to the presence of copper.

http://nzic.org.nz/ChemProcesses/biotech/12A.pdf

Although I suspect you've probably found this out by now.

 

[gumboot]

The purpose of a jury is to let the people, as opposed to a judge AKA government, put someone in jail. It is a terrible (big-n-scary) power.

There's no great philosophical argument against government declining to prosecute. The judge should have just cancelled the trial.

I don't know about Australia, but under New Zealand law a judge is actually entitled to instruct a jury's verdict, and a jury that fails to adhere to the judge's instruction would be guilty of contempt of court.

I'm only aware of one case, however, where the judge actually instructed the jury to a specific verdict.

 

[gumboot]

I think part of it is that many people thought it a ridiculous scenario.

As if you told me right now in the USA that an opossum had carried off an infant.

The animal was not seen as capable of the act.

Everybody was wrong, as it happens, but the anger was because they thought this woman had concocted a ridiculous story.

This is my memory too. I was only a child.

One thing to bear in mind is that throughout the 1980s and 90s there were quite a large number of false imprisonments. I suspect a reason for this is that the rise in reliance on forensic evidence and expert testimony resulted in a sort of false sense of certainty - the reality is the science behind much of that expert testimony (psychology, DNA testing, etc...) was still in its infancy and nowhere near as certain as the experts led jurors to believe. What seems to be common is that in these notable false convictions the prosecution case tends to rest almost exclusively on the expert testimony of one or two forensic scientists or psychologists or similar.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

effectively they did a substrate control

According to this:



http://nzic.org.nz/ChemProcesses/biotech/12A.pdf

Although I suspect you've probably found this out by now.

I would say that when inaccessible areas of the car (places that could only be tested by removing some sort of panel with screws) tested positive by ortho-tolidene, this should have caused some furrowed brows. This was in effect a substrate control that turned out positive. They also tested other areas of the car with antibodies to fetal hemoglobin, but the antibody reacted with some sort of material that was used for damping sound, IIRC.

 

[catsmate]

This is my memory too. I was only a child.

One thing to bear in mind is that throughout the 1980s and 90s there were quite a large number of false imprisonments. I suspect a reason for this is that the rise in reliance on forensic evidence and expert testimony resulted in a sort of false sense of certainty - the reality is the science behind much of that expert testimony (psychology, DNA testing, etc...) was still in its infancy and nowhere near as certain as the experts led jurors to believe. What seems to be common is that in these notable false convictions the prosecution case tends to rest almost exclusively on the expert testimony of one or two forensic scientists or psychologists or similar.

There were plenty of dubious and demonstrably false convictions on expert evidence before the 1980s.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

milk and false positives with ortho-tolidene; legal lynchings

"During the course of his investigations, Hosken discovered in a standard textbook, the warning that traces of heavy metals, especially copper, can stimulate peroxidase activity similar to that of blood. This inspired him to carry out further experiments of his own. Using an orthotolidine solution he tested a number of different substances. With milk, he found that it gave coloration indistinguishable from blood. His tests with a sample of laboratory copper oxide gave him startling results. The reaction was fast and a brilliant blue, the classic blood reaction." link.

I am not sure what in milk is reacting, but I am very intrigued. Jack Waterford's examination of the case in 2012 is worth reading in its entirety, but I especially liked the following:

"Most stem from the human error of theory-dependence - focusing on evidence that supports a theory already formed, ignoring evidence that doesn't, making connections that send investigations down certain paths, holding on to theories even after they have been falsified. Duhs shows in case after case how this caused vital clues to be ignored, and investigations marshalled to prove things which were wrong. Triumphant detectives are rarely given to self-doubt.

"It should not be thought that concerns about miscarriages of justice come only from an anti-police brigade. Here in Australia a number of forensic scientists have expressed concerns about the quality of evidence sometimes going before courts, the use of bad procedures, failures of chains of custody, incapacity to replicate results, the use of samples too small to guarantee results, sloppy systems of avoiding contamination and cross contamination, the use of impure chemicals, and the use of equipment which had not been validated or which were known for inaccurate results. As problematic, in some jurisdictions has been an association so close between forensic scientist and investigating police, as well as a pressure of overwork, that presents real risks of undermining the detachment that experts pretend. The scientific method, of course, is ever anxious to test a theory, not least with evidence that challenges it, rather than focusing only whittling facts until they fit the theory. The Chamberlain case is a warning about legal lynchings, and a reminder never to think a case is closed."