AC 3.1- Examine information for validity. [15 marks]
EVIDENCE
The prosecution/ defence will present evidence in court in a criminal trial, and
the jury/ magistrate decide the verdict based upon the validity of the
information given. The CPS must decide if the prosecution is admissible,
reliable or credible. The information might not reach court if the CPS think that
there is not a good chance that the jury/ magistrate might see this as invalid.
This means that evidence in a trial is valid and should be trusted. However this
is not always the case.
Jeremy Bamber who killed his adoptive parents, sister and her two twin sons at
their family home in Essex. At the 1986 trial the judge stated that it is
“inconceivable” that Sheila committed the killings. This would have meant her
attaching the sound moderator to the gun, fighting in the kitchen, going
upstairs shooting herself with the silencer attached to the gun, going back
downstairs, putting the silencer away in the cupboard, going back upstairs to
shoot herself and this time fatally. The silencer was hugely important to the
Prosecution because blood which allegedly came from Sheila was found inside
on the baffle plates. As the scratches on the mantle are proven to have been
made after the first crime scene photographs were taken, the evidence of the
silencer is now invalid. This includes the paint on the silencer, and the blood
inside the silencer as well. Whether Jeremy Bamber received a telephone call
from his father to say his sister had gone berserk with a gun came under the
spotlight at the Court of Appeal today. The key factor related to the timing of
that call and did not match the different testimonies. Therefore this cannot be
used as evidence and is invalid and the jury had delivered a guilty verdict. Julie
Mugford was the girlfriend of Jeremy Bamber who testified against him in
court, stating that he had told her he planned to kill his family for over a year,
and that he’d hired a hit man to carry out the shootings. There was movement
in the house whilst Bamber and the police were outside the white farm. The
key features of miscarriages of justice is frequently poor legal representative.
PS Bews most recently changed his narrative once more for the ITV Tonight
programme that aired on March 29, 2012; in this version, he said that Jeremy
saw the figure in the window. This casts doubt on the validity of the verdict.
EXPERT WITNESS TESTIMONY
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