Luke Mitchell and the murder of Jodi Jones

not witnesses

Elaedith said:
I'm not clear why the police should have any input into a psychiatric risk assessment for somebody who has been in prison for 20 years.
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Mr. Mitchell has had essentially no contact with females since his incarceration; therefore, it prompts one to ask exactly what they investigated.

Via the FreeLibrary, I found one newspaper article by Amy Devine in which a couple of young women were interviewed, and who made disturbing allegations about Mr. Mitchell's behavior. They had not been called as witnesses at the trial, and their credibility is open to debate. There is also an article at The Scotsman called something like Natural Born Killer, that is a dead link. I was not able to track it down with the Wayback Machine, either.
 
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DNA mixture in the Nealon case compared

In reading the judgment overturning Victor Nealon's conviction, I found this passage: "iii) Complex mixtures of DNA were retrieved from Ms E's skirt and tights. Each mixture included DNA from at least three individuals of whom at least one was a woman. Although the appellant shared some of the DNA components in this "mixed profile", the complexity of the results is such that a large proportion of the population would show concordance with these findings. This meant that the failure to eliminate the appellant from these mixtures has little significance." I take the word "concordance" to mean "are included as possible donors."

The DNA mixture in the Mitchell case (see my comment #242) was said to have more than two contributors. The evidence given by Susan Ure in the Mitchell case is possibly even less probative than the mixture being discussed in the preceding paragraph (the Nealon case), in that the DNA in the Mitchell case is a partial profile. BTW the Wikipedia page on the Jodi Jones case is a hot, sticky mess.
 
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article on courtroom identifications

At Judicature Professor Brandon Garrett wrote, "A courtroom identification, of course, is not actually a reliable test of the witness’s memory of the crime itself: It is not difficult to see where the defendant had been sitting during the entire trial at counsel’s table, and the context predetermines that the witness will identify the defendant...One study examined defendants who spent an average of 15 years in prison only to have their convictions later overturned by DNA evidence. The eyewitnesses in those wrongful conviction cases, almost without exception, testified with complete certainty at the trials at which innocent people were convicted. However, at the time of initial police lineups, most displayed a lack of confidence in their identifications.4"

The level of confidence that eyewitnesses have is also sometimes brought up in on-line discussions of this case.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
At Judicature Professor Brandon Garrett wrote, "A courtroom identification, of course, is not actually a reliable test of the witness’s memory of the crime itself: It is not difficult to see where the defendant had been sitting during the entire trial at counsel’s table, and the context predetermines that the witness will identify the defendant...One study examined defendants who spent an average of 15 years in prison only to have their convictions later overturned by DNA evidence. The eyewitnesses in those wrongful conviction cases, almost without exception, testified with complete certainty at the trials at which innocent people were convicted. However, at the time of initial police lineups, most displayed a lack of confidence in their identifications.4"

The level of confidence that eyewitnesses have is also sometimes brought up in on-line discussions of this case.
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Although there is still some debate, the claim that eyewitness confidence is positively associated with accuracy in the initial identification, provided it is made under ideal conditions (without contamination) seems to be gaining a stronger hold in the literature. However, this is not helpful if jurors base their impressions on confidence during the trial and are not told about the initial identification, or don't understand that confidence can change as a result of factors not related to accuracy. I was just reading this recent paper looking at the effect of confidence on mock juror verdicts in an experimental study that manipulated when the confidence judgement was made and whether or not it changed over time. These manipulations didn't affect mock juror judgements; jurors voted guilty more often when confidence was high at trial or initially or both, including where confidence was inflated between the initial identification and trial. Of course there are problems with mock jury studies, but I suspect it is difficult for jurors to disregard the effects of witness confidence at trial.
 
Conversely, the Lockerbie judges stated that they felt Tony Gauci was more reliable because he didn't immediately and confidently point to the obvious pick (they appeared to acknowledge that Megrahi was indeed the obvious pick in the line-up), but appeared to apply his mind and think about it. (And then say, "Not the man I saw in my shop...")

There are situations where a careful witness who will not commit himself beyond saying that there is a close resemblance can be regarded as more reliable and convincing in his identification than a witness who maintains that his identification is 100% certain.
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:hb:
 
Was it Fleming or Walsh?

Rolfe said:
SNIP
So, dock identification. This is so flawed it has now been banned. Everybody knows where the dock is and everybody knows who is in it. The astonishing thing isn't that Fleming and/or Walsh made a positive dock ID, it's that Bryson didn't. For her not to have made that identification is a huge red flag. For Fleming and Walsh to have done it, is nothing. They knew very well what Luke looked like, dammit so did I by that stage, from pictures in the newspapers, and I was 450 miles away and never met him in my life. Anyone who had seen the press coverage would have been able to pick him out of a formal ID parade, never mind point to the dock where the accused (known to be him) was the only person there, and say yes that's him. They'd probably persuaded themselves it was, by then.

(Dock ID was originally meant merely as a confirmation, to add a cross-check that this was actually the person the wotness was talking about. It wasn't meant to carry the weight of an identity parade, that's what identity parades are for. But prosecution advocates got into the habit of treating it like a positive ID parade identification, and the unfairness of this was so evident that it was banned.)

The Fleming/Walsh sighting is candy-floss. It's not incriminating even if it was Luke, but the likelihood that the ladies confabulated the sighting after reading about the murder and seeing pictures of Luke in the papers is high.
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Hi Rolfe,

Did we ever figure out whether it was Fleming or Walsh or both who provided the dock identification? My memory is fuzzy. It is remarkable that Bryson did not make an identification in court.
 
Sorry, I don't know. I was going by Sandra's book when I typed that, and as that isn't searchable I can't easily confirm it.
 
destroyed what evidence?

I have been reading Donald Findlay's cross examination of Shane Mitchell. link
SM: In the police car on the way to the station to be questioned, I was told that if I didn't answer the questions that they wanted answered I would definitely be going to jail for a minimum of 3 years.
DF: Oh, really?
SM: Yes I was told I had destroyed evidence and that that was going to be happening to me.

To which evidence does this refer? It could mean that the police thought Shane or Corinne burned the putative parka. If so, what was the hard evidence to that effect?
 
Shane's actions on 30 June

AT: would you have been content to have watched that sort of pornography if someone else was in the house?
SM: Oniy occasionally.
AT: Now what does that mean?
SM: If I thought that they wouldn't be coming upstairs.
AT: Right. Would you have been content to watch that sort of pornography in your room without a lock on the door and to have masturbated if you thought there was someone else in the house?
SM: No.

I infer that Shane would watch porn when someone else was in the house, if he were not masturbating. Earlier testimony (around 2044) from SM suggested that the door to his bedroom did not have a lock, but it does not sound as if he were certain. If I try to put myself in Luke or Corinne's shoes for a minute, I don't believe that I would be entering Shane's room unannounced, and I suspect Shane would have known this as well.
 
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In Sandra's book she says that Shane was mainly looking at car maintenance web sites, and the porn clips were of very short duration and looked like pop-ups. Ads, possibly.

Unintelligent people can allow themselves to be led into going along with scenarios that are wildly divergent from what actually happened because they're not smart enough to break free from a line of questioning.
 
Shane's testimony

Rolfe said:
In Sandra's book she says that Shane was mainly looking at car maintenance web sites, and the porn clips were of very short duration and looked like pop-ups. Ads, possibly.

Unintelligent people can allow themselves to be led into going along with scenarios that are wildly divergent from what actually happened because they're not smart enough to break free from a line of questioning.
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My casual reading of Shane's testimony suggests that Sandra's book is not entirely correct. Your second paragraph makes an excellent point.
 
Basis for a risk assessment

I found this passage at the National Registry of Exonerations: "At sentencing, Dr. James Grigson testified that Adams would be dangerous unless executed, and based upon this testimony, Adams was sentenced to death. Dr. Grigson, known as “Dr. Death,” provided nearly identical testimony in over 100 other death penalty cases, leading him to be sanctioned twice by the American Psychiatric Association, which takes an official position that the threat of future violence is impossible to predict and that it is unethical for psychiatrists to give testimony claiming to make such predictions."

This passage makes me more skeptical of the basis for the risk assessment in the present case than I was before (previously I was concerned that the people doing the assessment might not be independent of the judicial system).
EDT
"The most common form of violence risk assessment is still a judgment made by a clinician. However, this form of assessment lacks transparency, is vulnerable to cognitive biases and relies on the experience and expertise of the clinician. Actuarial assessments based on a score from of a list of identified risk factors have made violence risk assessment more objective, reliable and probably more accurate. More than 200 actuarial violence risk instruments have been described4. Despite their advantages over unaided clinical judgment, there are both scientific and ethical problems with the use of these instruments in clinical practice." link
 
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Chris_Halkides said:
My casual reading of Shane's testimony suggests that Sandra's book is not entirely correct. Your second paragraph makes an excellent point.
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I don't know what really happened here, but my casual reading of Shane's testimonly leads me to my second paragraph. I don't think he's bright enough to have cut short the questioning about what he might or might not do if he had been masturbating in his bedroom by saying, but that's not what I was doing, I was looking for a part for a car.

It's one of the oldest tricks in the book, to get a witness on a line of hypotheticals rather than actual events, until they agree that something is theoretically possible, then declare that the witness has confirmed this is what actually happened, or probably happened or might have happened.

Luke seems to have been the bright one in that family. His brother comes over as distressingly dim.
 
Shane and the perversion charge

Rolfe,

Good point regarding hypotheticals, and Mr Turnbull had just had Shane look at some gruesome photographs, leaving him shocked. Shane certainly seems to have been slow to the realization that the police were being intellectually dishonest regarding the charge of perverting the course of justice.
 
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assessing risk

Reporters for the Chicago Tribune wrote, In at least 29 cases, the prosecution presented damaging testimony from a psychiatrist who, based upon a hypothetical question describing the defendant’s past, predicted the defendant would commit future violence. In most of these cases, the psychiatrist offered this opinion without ever examining the defendant. Although this kind of testimony is sometimes used in other states, the American Psychiatric Association has condemned it as unethical and untrustworthy."

James Grigson's testimony against eventual exoneree Randall Dale Adams is an obvious example of a problem, but this article provides food for thought in other cases and other issues as well. The situation regarding Luke's risk assessment is obviously different, but perhaps some of the same problems that I mentioned earlier (cognitive bias, for example) come into play in both situations.
 
As you know, Mr Turnbull is someone I have a beef with that goes back many years. To 2000, no less.
 
parole for prisoners who maintain their innocence

"While it is stated in prison rules that maintenance of innocence should not prevent progression and parole,11 accounts from prisoners strongly suggest that the reality is very different...It is also apparent that there exists a substantial gap between official policy and the perceived reality facing prisoners. Official rhetoric is keen to emphasise that denial of guilt alone should not affect prison treatment, progression or parole. While such documents are understood to allay concerns that prisoners maintaining innocence cannot progress, they simultaneously make it very hard to do so – officially, claims of innocence are not a bar to release, the emphasis is instead on risk. However, it is very difficult to demonstrate a reduction in perceived risk without attendance at related offending behaviour courses, which often require an admission of guilt."
link

I have been reading a little on the questions regarding prisoners in England or Scotland who maintain their innocence being eligible for parole, which is pertinent to Luke Mitchell. In other words, is this a barrier. My reading so far does not provide a crystal-clear picture. There appear to have been some reforms, but how much of this is real versus window dressing is less clear.
 
as long as we are doing hypotheticals

Suppose that Shane had only been downloading pornographic images. Would he have been "content" (to use Turnbull's word) to do so with other people in the house?
 
Chris Halkides said:
"While it is stated in prison rules that maintenance of innocence should not prevent progression and parole,11 accounts from prisoners strongly suggest that the reality is very different...It is also apparent that there exists a substantial gap between official policy and the perceived reality facing prisoners. Official rhetoric is keen to emphasise that denial of guilt alone should not affect prison treatment, progression or parole. While such documents are understood to allay concerns that prisoners maintaining innocence cannot progress, they simultaneously make it very hard to do so – officially, claims of innocence are not a bar to release, the emphasis is instead on risk. However, it is very difficult to demonstrate a reduction in perceived risk without attendance at related offending behaviour courses, which often require an admission of guilt."
link

I have been reading a little on the questions regarding prisoners in England or Scotland who maintain their innocence being eligible for parole, which is pertinent to Luke Mitchell. In other words, is this a barrier. My reading so far does not provide a crystal-clear picture. There appear to have been some reforms, but how much of this is real versus window dressing is less clear.
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I was looking at this from the other point of view. Are they going to release David Gilroy, although he denies his guilt? That time hasn't come yet, but it has come as regards a very similar case in England.

Helen McCourt killer's release confirmed as mother loses legal bid

The mothers of both victims joined forces to push for a law to deny parole to a convicted murdere who refused to reveal the location of the victim's body. There was rejoicing when "Helen's Law" was passed, but when I read the details I couldn't see why they were so happy. It changed nothing. The parole board was merely required to take into consderation the fact that the killer was refusing to reveal where he'd disposed of the body. And indeed, even as the champagne was being uncorked, the parole board were already fixing up to release Ian Sims, on the grounds that he wasn't going to admit guilt or reveal the location of Helen's body even if they kept him in jail.

The McCourt case and the Pilley case are remarkably similar, with Helen McCourt disappearing on her way home from work and Suzanne Pilley disappearing on her way to work. The main difference is that there was an enormous amount of DNA supporing Sims's conviction, whereas Gilroy managed to keep his car and other places he stored the body clean of DNA. Anyway, the chances are that Gilroy will be released on the same grounds as Sims was released.

Where does this leave Luke Mitchell? I don't know. I'm getting a sense that there is a degree of animosity towards him within the prison system, because he knows his rights and he won't admit guilt. A podcast I watched some time ago suggested he was being denied the preparation for release he should have been entitled to.
 
the parole process

Rolfe said:
Where does this leave Luke Mitchell? I don't know. I'm getting a sense that there is a degree of animosity towards him within the prison system, because he knows his rights and he won't admit guilt. A podcast I watched some time ago suggested he was being denied the preparation for release he should have been entitled to.
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I put some comments and links about the parole process into the Malkinson thread. Rather than porting them over, let me briefly summarize in my own words: It sounds as if the parole board is obligated by law not to turn down for parole someone who claims to be innocent automatically. Yet denial of guilt can be a factor, in that a like lack of remorse can be considered. The have been changes since 2018, but an interview study of over sixty prisoners leads me to question how meaningful those changes have been. There are also questions in my mind about the process of predicting future violence, which sounds fraught with uncertainty and open to conscious or subconscious bias.
 
It's a complete mystery to me as to why they decided to release Ian Sims. I can't see how it could possibly have been determined that he didn't pose a risk of future violence.

You'd think some lessons might have been learned following the Stefan Kiszko tragedy, but I really don't think they were. Why would the Malkinson case change anything?

I'm conscious that I'm biassed here. I want them to lock David Gilroy up and throw away the key, because I don't believe a bloody word of his denials of guilt. On the other hand I want them to release Luke Mitchell because I don't believe for a moment he did it. And yet the parole board aren't allowed to think like that. They have to consider the two men equally guilty. And if it comes to judging character, then Gilroy is a devious manipulative charmer, and I could well see him convincing a parole board that he wouldn't hurt a fly.
 
a significant factor

From the Guidance on prisoners who maintain their innocence booklet I found two bullet points:
"It is unlawful for panels to refuse release solely because a prisoner maintains innocence, without considering how this will affect risk."

"A denial of guilt may, in appropriate circumstances, be a very significant factor, but it should not be treated as conclusively against the case for release or a progressive move to open conditions."

I searched the Malkinson thread, and the possible connection between the Guidance booklet (July 2024) and the Andrews Malkinson case was suggested by the newspaper Inside Time, not the information coming directly from Parole officials. I also see a connection, but my pessimistic side thinks that the new guidance is old wine in a new bottle. I first thought that the Malkinson case might be impetus for various reforms and reconsiderations of cases such as Luke Mitchell's. Victor Nealon's case was similar to and earlier than Andrew Malkinson's. If no one heeded Nealon's lessons when pondering Malkinson, then Malkinson's lessons will be ignored when considering Mitchell's.

There are additional passages in the July 2024 booklet that bear on the relationship between maintaining innocence and the possibility of parole. My present view is that maintaining innocence can still hurt one's chances for parole significantly, but maybe not in as many ways as it could have pre-2018.
 
Old wine in a new bottle is a very good way of describing "Helen's Law". It keeps happening. Stefan Kiszko, Victor Nealan, Andrew Malkinson. Sìon Jenkins, Paul Esslemont, Sally Clark, Angela Cannings, many more. All insisting they were innocent and all proved right in the end. We could go back and consider the IRA bombings and the related miscarriages of justice too.

The system doesn't want to change. It doesn't want to consider that someone who has been found guilty by a court and possibly had several appeals refused might possibly be innocent, even though it keeps happening. And it's certainly the case that people who assert their innocence are not always innocent. I give you David Gilroy, again.

One of the things that would help here is a better appeals system. A system that genuinely considers that the appellant could be innocent, rather than defaulting to an assumption of guilt and a knee-jerk tendency to dismiss the appeal on even the most spurious grounds.
 
Kirk Bloodsworth and faulty eyewitness testimony

Chris_Halkides said:
Dan Simon wrote, "When the evidence items are not truly independent of one another, they create a false sense of corroboration. In other words, a full-bodied set of inculpatory evidence can be a misleading artifact of the investigative process. Indeed, in a number of known wrongful convictions, the case presented to the jury consisted of strongly corroborating evidence, all of which turned out to have been false.160"

160For illustration, a capital prosecution of an innocent Maryland man included identifications by five eyewitnesses, a shoe impression, and a putatively incriminating statement made by the defendant, all leading the prosecutor to describe the evidence as being "extremely strong." SCHECK ET AL., supra note 116, at 222. For more on this investigation and trial of Kirk Bloodsworth, see TIM JUNKIN, BLOODSWORTH 39, 85-86, 136-37 (2004).

Of course there was no confession in the Luke Mitchell case, nor in the Bloodsworth case. My general point is that if evidence in any case seems to be independent but is not, then the case looks stronger than it actually is. With respect to the Mitchell case, the 2008 denial of appeal claimed that the accounts of Ms. Bryson and Ms. Fleming/Ms. Walsh corroborated each other, a claim that Sandra Lean rebutted.

Dan Simon wrote, "Factfinders would gain much by being able to compare witnesses' courtroom testimony with the exact statements they initially gave the police." There were times that Donald Findlay attempted to point this out, but the jury in the Mitchell case was apparently unpersuaded.
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The Innocence Project wrote, "At trial, five witnesses testified that they had seen Bloodsworth with the victim. However, two of these witnesses had not been able to identify Bloodsworth during a lineup, but had seen him after the crime was committed on television." I wanted to come back to the Bloodsworth case to point out how pernicious it is when someone's photograph is made public before a trial. Luke's photograph appearing in the papers is one of the reasons I consider the Fleming and Walsh citing to be extremely poor evidence.
 
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Independent assessment regarding risk after release

From a spring Scottish Sun article: "Claiming she’s been left in the dark over the psychiatrists’ assessments, Dr Lean added: “To not let Luke or his lawyers see all of this new report has to be a breach of his human rights.

“We don’t know if they’ll allow us an independent psychiatrist to give a second opinion.”"

IIUC a claim was made at the UK Justice Forum to the effect that a prisoner could submit an independent appraisal, but the passage above makes me uncertain.
TomG said:
Is there any reason why anyone interested in Luke's case shouldn't use the UK Justice forum that seems to be quite well established by comparison?

Hoots
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As an aside, I am sure that the participants at that thread are decent people who pull the weeds in their gardens and return borrowed library books in a timely manner. What is in short supply there is a willingness to challenge authority while thinking critically. There is no interest, for example, in comparing this case to other cases to identify possible problems in the investigation. One thing that I like about this thread is that even when there is broad agreement, participants differ in their opinions regarding the details and challenge one another in constructive ways.
 
Steven Kelly 30 July statement

Chris_Halkides said:
Portions of trial testimony have begun to appear on line, including Steven Kelly's. Pro-guilt commenters sometimes deny the assertion that members of the search party changed what they said in their early police statements versus their testimony. The cross-examination by Donald Findlay indicates that Mr. Kelly's statement on 30 July was that Luke's dog Mia stood on her hind legs with her front paws on the wall.
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DF: Remember...in your 30th July statement saying this. "I stopped to check some (incomprehensible) out, something in the undergrowth, but Alice carried on a couple of steps. I was aware of the dog pulling Luke over to the wall and saw it standing on its hind legs with its front paws on the wall." Do you remember that?
SK: I can't remember.
I typed this passage out by hand from this link; therefore, there could be a typo here or there.
 
more on the transcript of Steven Kelly

DF: You talk about Luke being a couple of footsteps in front of us. "The dog was sniffing about and then pulling him mainly towards the right into the undergrowth at the wall". Now do you remember the dog doing that?
SK: no answer
DF: To assist you I will read you one more sentence. "I seem to remember Luke's dog pulling him over to the wall prior to us reaching the broken part of the wall where we went over". Do you remember that happening?
SK: As I says, I can remember him being at the part of the wall. Now I can't remember about the dog (sic). Obviously it was fresh in my mind when I gave my statement.

Again, this is my retyping of a scanned document; therefore, there could be typos.
 
Rolfe said:
Old wine in a new bottle is a very good way of describing "Helen's Law". It keeps happening. Stefan Kiszko, Victor Nealan, Andrew Malkinson. Sìon Jenkins, Paul Esslemont, Sally Clark, Angela Cannings, many more. All insisting they were innocent and all proved right in the end. We could go back and consider the IRA bombings and the related miscarriages of justice too.

The system doesn't want to change. It doesn't want to consider that someone who has been found guilty by a court and possibly had several appeals refused might possibly be innocent, even though it keeps happening. And it's certainly the case that people who assert their innocence are not always innocent. I give you David Gilroy, again.

One of the things that would help here is a better appeals system. A system that genuinely considers that the appellant could be innocent, rather than defaulting to an assumption of guilt and a knee-jerk tendency to dismiss the appeal on even the most spurious grounds.
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Gail Maney is our latest in the colony.
And then she shared a cell with a man.
She had her conviction quashed last week.
It is vanishingly improbable that an innocent inmate can be released, yet the judiciary are accorded status:

Pillars of society
 
For this comment to make sense, I assert that Greg Fester is one of two people undoubtedly guilty of the murder of Wayne and Sharmon Stock and that Nick Sampson had nothing to do with this crime, as discussed in another thread here.

In his book Bloody Lies John Ferak wrote, "Suddenly, a new face inside the bar gave Drake an “uneasy feeling.” A young man with dark hair halfway down his ack walked past him and headed toward the kitchen and restrooms, Drake told police. Drake claimed he asked one of the patrons about the new stranger in town and one of them answered, ‘Gregory Fester II from Wisconsin…a friend of Nick Sampson’s’…Drake claimed he saw a large dog in the back of a red [pickup] truck bearing Wisconsin license plates…Coincidentally, Nick Sampson also had two large dogs that matched the same general description.”

Mr. Ferak continued, “They [Cass County Investigators] made it easy for Drake by furnishing him with a photo lineup consisting of six long-haired dudes. One of the mug shots included the very same photo of Fester that had been splashed across the Nebraska news media during the previous month.” Drake picked this photo out. O’Callaghan administered a lie detector test and found Drake to be truthful. Other witnesses remembered Mr. Drake’s being at the bar but did not remember seeing Mr. Fester.

My point with respect to the Mitchell thread is the use of photographs that have appeared in the media is abysmal practice for obtaining a reliable identification, but it is a good tactic to get the identification that the investigator wants. The existence of the newspaper photograph in the Mitchell case was problematic in at least two ways. One concerned the Fleming/Walsh possible sighting, and the other concerned the witnesses who claimed to see Mitchell in a parka style jacket before the murder. The latter issue may not have come up in this thread before.
 
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A transcript of Mr. Turnbull's summation has been released, and I have started reading it. He seems to be doing a variation on the 'Mr. X would have to be the unluckiest person in the world for all of these circumstances to just be coincidence' closing argument speeches. He said, "However we can add in another circumstance. The young man was thought to be up to no good by those who saw him." That got me thinking. How many times have I driven by a person standing near the road and said to my self that this person is up to no good?
 
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The court transcripts that have been uploaded thus far have reinforced my belief that LM is guilty. I'm of the opinion that the circumstantial evidence against him was overwhelming - not least AD Turnbull's dismantling of SM and CM on the stand; both of them were clearly lying - AD Turnbull even warned CM about perjury during her testimony - and responded with many "I don't know" and "I can't remember" answers frequently. However, SM said under oath verbatim: "I genuinely don't remember seeing my brother that day. He could have been there." In other words, LM wasn't in the house between 1650 - 1730. All SM had to say was that LM was there, but he didn't. His testimony in regards to LM's whereabouts was, at times, ludicrous. The Mitchell household at the time was merely a two-storey dwelling - not some massive castle with a labyrinth of rooms and corridors. It would've been impossible for two people to be in that house at the same time and not see or hear each other, and all SM had to say was that LM was there; yet, he never, and finally conceded, as mentioned above, that he genuinely didn't remember seeing his brother that day. The fact that such a big deal was made of a simple question (ie, was LM in the house between 1650 - 1730?) was extremely telling. And, of course, once you combine all the other strands of circumstantial evidence and apply the principles of Occam's razor, it becomes glaringly obvious that LM is guilty as sin (imo).
 
'He looked as if he were up to no good' is a subjective statement. Even setting aside all of the other problems in Fleming and Walsh's testimonies, it is not probative. In addition, it is suggestive of post-hoc reimagining. The fact that it was brought up in a closing argument one small indication of how weak the case against him was.
 
I just read Mr. Turnbull's bringing up how shaken that Shane Mitchell was when he saw photographs of the murder, or how Steven Kelly reacted. Mr. Turnbull contrasted this with Luke's alleged reaction. "He was not being sick like Steven was." What Mr. Turnbull misleadingly left out is that a contemporary news article (available at The Free Library the last time I checked) indicated that Luke was taken ill when he saw the photographs during the trial, so ill that the trial had to be delayed (see my comment #594 on p. 15 of this thread). As I progress in reading the summation, the case is not looking any better, but Mr. Turnbull's conduct is looking worse.
 
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"One of the advantages of Mrs Bryson's evidence is that we can identify, with considerable accuracy, just what time it was that she was driving past the top of the path." Wow, just wow.
 
Oh dear.

I know exactly what Mr Turnbull did during the Lockerbie trial. He's a thoroughly dishonest character.
 
Mr. Turnbull said that we could know when Mrs Bryson saw the two people using the time of the shopping receipt. But if she saw the people then looked at the home, then most of the path is not visible to an approaching car. I recall a comment at a YouTube presentation on the case claiming a different order of events, namely that Mrs Bryson had already viewed the house, then saw the two people. This leads to a different set of problems. One is whether there is enough time to see the house. Two is that it makes for less certainty in the time of sighting than Mr. Turnbull claimed. Three is that Mrs. Bryson would return to her home much, much earlier than she claimed.

Mr Turnbull makes much of the fact that Mrs Bryson saw a photograph of Mr Mitchell after she made her identification. By the time she saw the photograph in the newspaper, she may have been remembering the photo from the lineup, not the original event. In addition his arguments about the quality of the identification, a problem that Mr Findlay highlighted, are open to serious question. "And surely, ladies and gentlemen, that, that's an untenable and exaggerated proposition. They can't have set out to, to deliberately disadvantage him."

In a series of comments here I brought up a number of cases of mistaken witness identifications, one of them being Dean Gillispie from Ohio. Mr Gillispie's case is one in which the authorities put a thumb on the scale regarding line ups, and one should not close one's mind to this possibility in others.
 
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There's no doubt at all that whatever Mrs Bryson saw, she was driving away from Easthouses when she saw it. It's impossible to see anything there if you're driving towards Easthouses.
 
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