Shirley McKie - Inching Towards An End
Posted by almax on March 15, 2008
The Scottish Government has finally gone some way towards honouring its pre-election pledge to set up a judicial inquiry in relation to Shirley McKie’s case, though, in the way of these things, it’s all proceeding at a very leisurely pace. The Northern Irish appeal judge, Lord Justice Campbell has been appointed to head the inquiry, which ‘is due to start in September’ (which is 6 months away !! - still, in the context of the case having already lasted over 10 years, what is another 6 months?)
Well, a lot actually - the main player, Shirley McKie herself, is so fed up that her father is quoted as saying yesterday that she didn’t want this latest inquiry.
In announcing the Inquiry, the Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill said Lord Justice Campbell would investigate steps taken to identify the disputed fingerprint evidence and make recommendations as to what further measures might now be introduced to ensure shortcomings are avoided in the future.
It has taken a quite unconscionably long time for us to reach this stage. That something was seriously awry has been known in the upper echelons of law and politics since Shirley McKie’s acquittal on the charge of perjury. That was on 14 May 1999. I hope Lord Justice Campbell rigorously investigates why the Scottish political and legal system took the best part of 10 years to face up to the necessity of commissioning him to look into the whole sorry affair. Iain McKie correctly points out that it’s ten years during which his daughter has moved from being a young woman into middle age. It’s ten years during which the McKie family have had to fight every step of the way for justice, and it’s ten years where because of obstruction and obfuscation the taint of ‘guilt’ still hangs over Shirley McKie despite her crushing victories in both criminal and civil forums. And, unbelievably, it’s ten years during which the formerly reliable science of fingerprint identification has been consigned to a sort of legal twilight zone in Scotland.
It has gone on so long that even some of the more recent key players (McConnell, Jamieson, Boyd etc) have passed unmourned into the dustbin of history.
Before LJ Campbell, we might finally have some answers as to what these people and others were up to during that long decade.
March 15, 2008 at 3:12 pm
There has been so much delay in honouring pledges amongst all governments of the world that the trust and faith that people put in at the time of their election invariably waivers. This can not be a good sign, no matter which hemisphere the country is in.
March 15, 2008 at 6:08 pm
You might be interested in my take on the Shirley McKie affair:
http://www.stevehornsc.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pf.htm
Unfortunately this observation might be outside the remit of the new inquiry
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2008/03/14100804
March 15, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Steve
Thank you for one of the most fascinating contributions to the whole affair that I’ve seen.
I have written about this case on numerous occasions -
http://almax.wordpress.com/?s=shirley+mckie
but the approach you take has never previously crossed my mind.
At the time of the discovery of the ‘rogue’ fingerprint in Marion Ross’s house, the difficulty for the police investigating the murder was palpable and acute - unless some explanation was given for that fingerprint then it had the potential to completely scupper the case against the accused person (which itself was almost entirely based on fingerprint evidence, and by exclusion of other candidates) - with the best will in the world, it might be rare to find a jury who would understand the niceties of your logical and statistical analysis - much more likely that the jury would arrive at the conclusion that the ‘rogue’ print (had it remained unidentified) was in fact placed there by an unknown mystery man (ie the ‘real’ killer). It was therefore an immediate imperative that the police identify the author of the fingerprint and (quite literally as it turned out) ‘eliminate’ that person.
I was particularly interested in what you had to say about ‘the prosecutor’s fallacy’ - I am fairly certain that not all prosecutors in Scotland have even heard that phrase, and even among those who’ve heard of it, many would be unable to explain its meaning or effect. On the contrary, you could go into any court in Scotland next week and hear forensic science conclusions on DNA analysis being freely interpreted (by BOTH prosecution AND defence AND by the bench) as “it is 5 million to 1 against that a man other than the defendant left the semen” or some similar variation thereof.
best wishes
Alastair
March 15, 2008 at 9:22 pm
You may also like to have a look at previous postings about Oscar Slater’s case, which although it long preceded modern forensic science, contains the truly amazing wrinkle that Slater was first suspected because of his apparent connection to a piece of jewellry stolen from the deceased - even when that ‘clue’ subsequently turned out to have no substance whatsoever, the police and prosecuting authorities were still convinced they had the right man (ie it was almost as though they had stuck a pin in a telephone directory and arrested the man whose name was thus selected - and coincidentally (or by divine providence) he turned out to be the killer !!!)
http://almax.wordpress.com/?s=%22the+very+strange+case+of+oscar+slater%22
March 16, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Alistair,
Part of the problem with fingerprinting is that it claims infallablity. The FBI officially says that the technique is infallable but humans sometimes make mistakes. They say if fingerprint experts follow the methods correctly then the wrong person will NEVER be identified (this assertion has never been tested). Any time a misidentification can be proved to have happened, they say the examiners did not follow the correct methods. These bad people are no longer working in the profession so juries can assume that a fingerprint identification is infallable. Nobody needs to bother about the sort of thing that I pointed out.
In a recent case in the US, a judge disagreed
http://www.onlinelawyersource.com/news/fingerprint-evidence.html
Steve
March 16, 2008 at 1:40 pm
[...] to the notion of stories that just seem to keep going and going and going, Alastair thinks we might be seeing the Shirley McKie saga head slowly towards a conclusion, nine years after [...]