Email me at Mike Emery. All financial contributions are cheerfully accepted. If you want to keep it private, use my PGP Key. Home Page
Evidence
DIY Law
A lot of money claims and bad service claims can be done in person.QUOTE
On 2 July 2001 Barry George, 41, was convicted at the Old Bailey of the murder of the broadcaster Jill Dando, best known as the presenter of the BBC programme Crimewatch. Few, if any recent convictions, have been greeted with such disquiet by the media. Leader comment (3 July) from the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph give the gist of press feeling: "Despite his loathsome character and criminal record, the evidence against George was hardly compelling" (Daily Mail). "...there can be few convictions that need the imprimatur of the higher courts [ie the agreement of the Court of Appeal that the conviction is sound] more than this." (Daily Telegraph). The comment is all the more noteworthy for coming from the two British national newspapers most unfriendly to the criminal and most supportive of the courts and the police.
UNQUOTE
The BBC was making a fuss because one of their own was murdered. The Met wanted a result. They fingered a half wit with a bit of previous, a man from their List of Usual Suspects. The Crown Prosecution Service allowed extremely dubious evidence to be used to make a case. He went away for eight years because a Jury was not really on the ball. Law is a crap shoot. Scott Lomax goes over the same ground in The Case of Barry George, Legal Notes No. 40, 2003
Expert Evidence
Should you ever
trust expert evidence? Not without a large dose of common sense
especially if you are at the receiving end.
Suspect Identities - A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification
QUOTE
"No two fingerprints are alike," or so it goes. For nearly a hundred years fingerprints have represented definitive proof of individual identity in our society. We trust them to tell us who committed a crime, whether a criminal record exists, and how to resolve questions of disputed identity.
But in Suspect Identities, Simon Cole reveals that the history of criminal identification is far murkier than we have been led to believe. Cole traces the modern system of fingerprint identification to the nineteenth-century bureaucratic state, and its desire to track and control increasingly mobile, diverse populations whose race or ethnicity made them suspect in the eyes of authorities. In an intriguing history that traverses the globe, taking us to India, Argentina, France, England, and the United States, Cole excavates the forgotten history of criminal identification--from photography to exotic anthropometric systems based on measuring body parts, from fingerprinting to DNA typing. He reveals how fingerprinting ultimately won the trust of the public and the law only after a long battle against rival identification systems.
As we rush headlong into the era of genetic identification, and as fingerprint errors are being exposed, this history uncovers the fascinating interplay of our elusive individuality, police and state power, and the quest for scientific certainty. Suspect Identities offers a necessary corrective to blind faith in the infallibility of technology, and a compelling look at its role in defining each of us.
UNQUOTE
Believe nothing until it is officially denied.
Talcum dog team leave red faces
Teaching dogs the smell of cocaine makes sense. If a cop steals the coke the training is not much use. Are they looking for a thief? Maybe. Did villains get away with it? Maybe. Should you believe a police man? NEVER.
Finger Print Evidence Is Not Good Enough [ 16 November 2007 ]
QUOTE
A Baltimore County judge has ruled that fingerprint evidence, a mainstay of forensics for nearly a century, is not reliable enough to be used against a homicide defendant facing a possible death sentence - a finding that national experts described yesterday as unprecedented and potentially far-reaching.
UNQUOTE
Look at the mug shot and decide whether he is guilty. It is fairly obvious.
Errors & omissions,
broken links, cock ups, over-emphasis, malice [ real or imaginary ] or
whatever; if you find any I am open to comment.
Email me at Mike
Emery.
All financial contributions are cheerfully accepted. If you want to
keep it
private, use my PGP Key. Home Page
Updated onMonday, 27 October 2008 10:34:50