mercredi 2 décembre 2020

The IRA bombing cases of the 1970s

I would like to start a discussion of at least four related cases: Birmingham Six, Guildford Four, Maguire Seven, and Judith Ward. There may be others that I missed. My main focus will be on the problems in the forensics, including issues of recording and disclosing data. I will add comments as time permits. However, any aspect of the investigation is on topic for this thread, as far as I am concerned. These aspects include but are not limited to false confessions and police misconduct.

Let me start not with the forensics, however, but rather with an issue that often comes up in cases of possible wrongful convictions. One of the people who looked deeply into the Birmingham Six case was Chris Mullin. He wrote, "A long procession of police officers ranging in rank from detective constable to chief superintendent gave evidence that no one had laid a finger on the suspects. In his summing up the judge outlined, in tones of incredulity, the scale of the conspiracy the police would have to have engaged in if the defendants were telling the truth. We now know that a conspiracy on this scale is essentially what did occur."

The question of whether or not the defendants' claim require one to believe in a broad conspiracy came up in the early Knox/Sollecito threads as well. The same may be true of the Avery/Dassey threads, but I do not recall clearly.


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