Blog entry 6th April 2016
Well, it's another month in to 2016 and Kent Police and CPS are still refusing my solicitors requests to afford the independent forensic scientist access to the forensic evidence so that it may be re-tested.
My legal team have written to them several times. On each occasion their request letters have been tellingly ignored. In my view of this I invite all of you who follow the developments in my case through my blogs and this web-site to ponder this question. "If Kent Police and CPS have nothing to hide and are confident in the case they presented against me at court, then why will they not allow their acclaimed evidence to be independently tested?" Perhaps it is for the same reason why they withheld at trial and continue to withhold a wealth of documented evidence that supports the case for my successful appeal. This includes indisputable evidence that verifies that I could not have been in Susan Kent's home at the time of her murder.
Over the coming months keep an eye out for the appeal being entered for Jarvis Johnson, an American national here in the UK. Over the past 12 months or so I've found him a new forensic expert and with the helpful responses from the UK forensic science regulator have managed to get the right questions asked about his conviction. His conviction is very similar to the case of Barry George as it hinges on microscopic particles claimed to be gunshot residue by the prosecution.
Jarvis now has a new forensic report which demonstrates that the prosecutions' forensic examiners ere either incompetent or corrupt. This is a common occurrence in most convictions being appealed on forensic evidence. It is far from uncommon to discover that the investigating police force have blatantly encouraged members of the former Forensic Science Service to look for specific matches to their chief suspect, rather than performing a "blind" test where the forensic examiner would have no knowledge of which sample came from the acclaimed suspect when being compared to crime scene samples.
It is of no surprise that tests have shown that when a forensic examiner for the prosecution is told who the prime suspect is and which is their test sample, be it DNA, fingerprints or otherwise, the forensic examiner is significantly more likely to produce a match to the crime scene sample. This is not justice in any form.
In my own case forensic papers which were only disclosed two years after my wrongful conviction reveal that the forensic examiner for the police had several conferences with Kent Police. In these documents details show that;
- He was encouraged to achieve a DNA match against me by the police.
- He was told exactly which 'suspect' sample was mine.
- He was told which crime scene sample a "match" was needed to be made to.
Prior to this conference with Kent Police the DNA results were so incomplete that no match could be claimed. Post this conference the results were "enhanced" and a match claimed by the forensic examiner for the police.
Had my jury known this would they have been quite so ready to accept the validity of the prosecutions DNA match claims?